Bread Crumbs
When you are navigating through an unknown environment, whether it be
a city, a forest or a hyperdocument, you always face the danger of getting
lost.
A common technique, from fairy tails to actual life, to avoid not finding
your way back, is to leave marks behind.
When you leave "bread crumbs" behind, you will recognize a node that was
visited before.
So the bread crumbs facility is most useful when the system does not
provide the highlighting links facility
(which already indicates you have already visited the node, before actually
following the link that gets you there).
Also, the bread crumbs facility assumes the user has a poor memory.
Experience shows that text nodes that are illustrated with figures
are easily recognized when visited a second time, without the need for
the bread crumbs facility.