Recently we've received a design that uses breadcrumbs, but specifies a breadcrumb for a page that does not exist. In effect, the breadcrumb in question, relates to a section of a top-level page. We're wondering if this use of breadcrumbs is not advisable or whether this is more common than we're aware of.
Example: Page 1 (main information page) contains 2-4 sections describing topics contained in sub-pages. Each topic's text is marked up using html (a H1 or H2). Page 2 (is a page that list products and info related to the topics on Page 1).
The design is this: Page 1 > This is our top-level page. The user is presented with 3-4 sets of products grouped by hyperlinked Topic text (as HTML H1's or H2's).
When the user clicks on a Topic they are taken to Page 2: The breadcrumb this new design specifies is this: Page 1 > Topic Text > Page 2
And when a user clicks the Topic Text "breadcrumb", they are taken to Page 1, and CSS is used to highlight the Topic Text the user originally clicked on.
The above seems odd in that the "Topic text" breadcrumb does not relate to a page. Are we being too purist in our interpretation of the use of breadcrumbs?
Also, suggestions for how to best to implement this would be welcome. We'll need to pass some value or indicator from the second level page back to the first when the user selected the "Topic text" breadcrumb. JavaScript? queryString?
Thanks for your insights.