navigating "up" a hierarchy - what's the metro way

Question

I'm trying to modify overflow7 so that its even quicker to navigate - trying to make it more quickly browsable.

To do this, I want to add the notion of navigating "up" as well as the "back" direction that's so natural in WP7. So, if a user is browsing a StackOverflow question then I want them to be able to:

• quickly navigate "up" to the StackOverflow page (this could be ten steps "back" otherwise)

• quickly navigate "up" again to the list of all StackExchange sites.

Currently, I've experimented with using a "Home" icon on the application bar (but this goes too far currently - all Home requests go to the top level), and I've experimented with putting a hyperlink top-left on the page. I've also tried putting a series of them as a breadcrumb.

These experiments have so far had several problems:

• they've required too much thumb dexterity - links at the top of the page are a bit of a stretch
• they've looked a bit ugly
• they've taken up too much screen real-estate (especially the breadcrumb)

I think I'm currently heading towards trying to use some sort of Up icon on the Application Bar - although the designs I've looked at so far don't really look like they fit with Metro...

So... I'm asking the Metro design gurus among us: what's a nice Metro-friendly way to achieve the effect I'm looking for? Is there a Metro-friendly concept I could link to in terms of verb and icon? I am trying to work with Metro, rather than against it.

Answer 1

This is one of those situations where there just isn't a good "metro" way to do this - the guidance really is, back key presses, until "home". In fact, some of the marketplace ingestion requirements enforce this in some situations.