Since I am configuring and installing Alfresco for customers I have a remark about the breadcrumb. Many of the customers want it to be a path showing the current node location instead of the default breadcrumb. In fact it behaves like a path if you are using only the browsing interface, but not if you are using the navigator on the left. This is often seen as a bug by the users.

The good news is that Alfresco breadcrumb will be configurable in version 3.0. This feature is already present in Alfresco 2.9. The Web client customisation FAQ page from the Alfresco Wiki explains how to configure it. However, if you want this feature on a previous version of Alfresco this can also be done... even if it is a bit more tricky.

To do this, you will have to override the org.alfresco.web.ui.common.renderer.BreadcrumbRenderer class and implement the encodeBegin() method yourself by using the NavigatorBean.getCurrentNode() method and the NodeService. To make Alfresco use your renderer instead of the defaults, don't forget to add something like the following section in the faces-config-custom.xml file:

<render-kit>
    <renderer>
     <component-family>org.alfresco.faces.Controls</component-family>
    <renderer-type>org.alfresco.faces.BreadcrumbRenderer</renderer-type>
    <renderer-class>some.company.alfresco.MyBreadcrumbRenderer</renderer-class>
    </renderer>
</render-kit>

And do not forget to change the class name in this small XML code...