Enhanced HtmlHelper::getCrumbs() from CakePHP 2.x to allow custom first link url and passing of images

HtmlHelper.php

<?
/**
	 * Returns the breadcrumb trail as a sequence of &raquo;-separated links.
	 *
	 * @param string $separator Text to separate crumbs.
	 * @param string $startText This will be the first crumb, if false it defaults to first crumb in array
	 * @param mixed $startPath Url for the first link in the bread crumbs, can be a string or array
	 * @param boolean $escape Escape the content of the link text, set to false if passing an image in
	 * @return string Composed bread crumbs
	 * @link http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-libraries/helpers/html.html#creating-breadcrumb-trails-with-htmlhelper
	 */
		public function getCrumbs($separator = '&raquo;', $startText = false, $startPath = '/', $escape = true) {
			if (!empty($this->_crumbs)) {
				$out = array();

				if ($startText) {
					$out[] = $this->link($startText, $startPath, array('escape' => $escape));
				}

				foreach ($this->_crumbs as $crumb) {
					if (!empty($crumb[1])) {
						$out[] = $this->link($crumb[0], $crumb[1], $crumb[2]);
					} else {
						$out[] = $crumb[0];
					}
				}
				return join($separator, $out);
			} else {
				return null;
			}
		}

Would it not be better to place this support inside of the options array?

Yeah, this was a quickly put together solution. Mark Story suggested overloading the $startText parameter as another alternative, in the thread regarding this on Lighthouse..

In fact its been added to 2.1 cakephp/cakephp@c89c49c