(This is in relation to my ongoing Online Wayfinding System project.)
An online “location” falls within more than a single hierarchy.
The importance of having this in mind is because mapping a time-based browsing session or history has different outcome as opposed to mapping the hierarchy of web resources in terms of URL, server, etc. The first is more about the subjective user experience, while the second is a matter of indexing pieces of information that can be used, at best, as reference.
However, I feel that a hybrid consideration of both hierarchies is conductive: there is a benefit for the user in knowing the “physical” location (as in the HTML element) in the current page, as well as the the relation between this page to either the already visited pages in the domain (e.g. how far am I from the first page I visited in this domain in this session?), or the simplified blueprint of the website (e.g. where does this page stand in relationship to the main page in the website, the one to which I can return to take alternative paths of browsing?).
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