Getting Content breadcrumb navigation path in SharePoint 2010 as seen in SharePoint 2007

Content breadcrumb navigation (Textual Current Navigation Path)

Here is a workaround with minimal coding effort to show Current Navigation Path in SharePoint 2010 Master page. This is one of the features in SharePoint 2007 suppose to be very a useful visual element that is missing in SharePoint 2010 during migration from SharePoint 2007.

In SharePoint 2007

In SharePoint 2010

In SharePoint 2010, the out-of-the box shows navigation path but it gets trimmed if the path is too long.

Here is a simplest workaround to get the full textual path. Try adding following few lines of code in the v4 Master page (at approximately after line 648). You can use SharePoint Designer 2010 to make a copy of the v4 master page and apply it as master page from the Site Settings.

<td valign="top" class="ms-titlearea">

        <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderTitleBreadcrumb" runat="server">

<asp:SiteMapPath SiteMapProvider="SPContentMapProvider" id="ContentMap" SkipLinkText="" NodeStyle-CssClass="ms-sitemapdirectional" runat="server"/> &nbsp;

          </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

</td>

This will bring the following Navigation Path in SharePoint 2010 master page as below. There is no limitation on the length of the path and hierarchy is shown in full.

      


References for additional reading:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/introduction-to-site-navigation-HA010255196.aspx