Try bold parent breadcrumbs.

[jasmussen]

This PR attempts to distinguish the breadcrumb for the current block, from the parent, by making the parent breadcrumb bold.

It also cleans up the visual by replacing the arrow with a middle dot. The hover state for the parent button retains an underline.

GIF:

The very delicate balance to reach here is between one of differentiating between a clickable breadcrumb and the current block, yet still providing a simple overall appearance given it's a permanently visible interface. If it screams at the sky, it will only add stress. It is also important to keep in mind that this interface is not, and cannot, be the only affordance for selecting parent blocks. The select tool exists, and #18667 ponders a button in the toolbar to "go up in the hierarchy", like the Up arrow in Windows Explorer.

So I'm hoping this strikes a balance between being more useful additional affordance, yet still simple so as to not distract.

[youknowriad]

I wonder if it should be the other way around, the selected block being bold?

[jasmussen]

In this case "bold" felt more clickable to me, which helps understand that it's not just for show.

[karmatosed]

I sort of agree I think with @youknowriad here that bold for current works. It also avoids multiple bolds which is visually a little confusing that small.

[jasmussen]

Here's an inversion of bold compared to what this started with:

Let me know if that's better, I still have a preference for the previous version. It's a bit unnerving that the Document crumb is always bold now.

To be clear, that GIF is from uncommitted changes, let me know and I'll commit them.

[youknowriad]

I'm on the fence here, I think the problem might be the "bold" effect entirely which makes me wonder if there's another way we could differentiate these: colors, underline...?

[draganescu]

@jasmussen probably not a solution but I liked this 😅

[karmatosed]

@draganescu interesting with a dot in between they seem almost disconnected.

[jasmussen]

The dots are in the initial version also. I personally like this, and the bold font, because both help reduce the weight of the interface, wheres arrows and borders and underlines just add optical complexity.

The problem with a color only is that it doesn't work for color blind folks. We need some other indicator, for example bold or hey, even italic. Underline is a traditionally used one, but the purpose of this PR was to explore if there was an alternative that did not involve adding still more borders.

[karmatosed]

@jasmussen wow I totally didn't recall that from when viewed earlier, thanks for context. I wonder if the color is making it seem more. In light of that perhaps a '>' or '-' over a dot? Sorry about that @draganescu I totally had a brain burp over that.

[jasmussen]

I'm tempted to let this one sit as I don't feel like either dashes or chevrons are an upgrade over the arrows we have currently shipping. Perhaps some answers will present themselves if/when we get farther with the G2 stuff.

[jasmussen]

This was a good discussion, and a good exploration, thank you all! But given there's no clear benefit, I'm closing it. It's possible #19348 will yield some explorations here also.