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Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

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Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#21

Post by dkurth »

pauletienney wrote: post #14
dj-wonk wrote: post #10

Favor: could someone share an intelligent (or at least in-depth) write-up of the pros/cons of infinite scrolling? Most of what I'm finding on the web is content farmy. Also: at what point is memory usage worth worrying about? Scrolling for pages on end has to be tough on a browser.

pro : good for mobile users - con : no footer

Another possible pro (from the site-owner's perspective) is increased user engagement. When you are quietly loading more content all the time, it's easier for the user to continue to say, "I'll just look at one more post."

On the cons side, as others have mentioned, if you navigate away from an infinitely scrolling page, then click the back button, you often don't land in the correct place.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#22

Post by izolate »

donutdan4114 wrote: post #3

Love this. If only Hacker News and Reddit would implement it.

No. Grab an extension like HN Special or RES if you want the functionality.

Infiniscroll is an evil creation, made worse by developers who insist on creating a footer at the end of the scroll view, just out of reach so that you can never quite get to it.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#23

Post by Nagyman »

aylons wrote: post #9
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RES uses infinite scrolling of some sort, yes.

Actually, a pretty decent infinite scroller, with markers so you know which page you are (and this makes it a lot easier to navigate).

It intelligently remembers where you were if you click a link and then back; it restores your previous scroll location. Pleasantly surprised by the behaviour as I usually do not enjoy infinite scroll.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#25

Post by iambateman »

digitaltoad wrote: post #18

Doesn't this still effectively break the back button or at least the users view of the back button? To the user although there are visual hints, he/she hasn't left the page. Scrolling down the page however creates multiple history entries.

It does.

This would be perfect if clicking the nav didn't cause a page reload. I expect the page to go back to an entirely previous page, if I hit the back button in this case.

That would not be the case if the sections of content were different from one another.

- A super-scrolling page with different sections of content might keep the back button functionality the way it is here.

- Homogeneous content like Facebook posts should not incur a back button through the pagination.

IMHO. But this is super cool otherwise.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#26

Post by _frog »

I really liked Discourse's approach to infinite scrolling[1], it updates the URL as you go with the History API's replaceState() function so you can safely navigate away from the page without losing your position.

[1]: http://eviltrout.com/2013/02/16/infinite-scrolling-that-work...

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#27

Post by DangerousPie »

digitaltoad wrote: post #18

Doesn't this still effectively break the back button or at least the users view of the back button? To the user although there are visual hints, he/she hasn't left the page. Scrolling down the page however creates multiple history entries.

I don't think it does, at least not on Firefox. When you scroll down the URL just updates without a history entry being added.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#28

Post by jonshariat »

_frog wrote: post #26

I really liked Discourse's approach to infinite scrolling[1], it updates the URL as you go with the History API's replaceState() function so you can safely navigate away from the page without losing your position. [1]: http://eviltrout.com/2013/02/16/infinite-scrolling-that-work...

If you look at the URL bar in google's example it does that as well.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#29

Post by evan_ »

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #11

The permanent menu - with locator options - at the bottom is brilliant.

Unless you scroll a page at a time using Page Down or Space.

When I'm at the top of the page, the last visible item is "Live Room". If I page down once, the first visible item becomes "Black Refraction". I never even see that there's an item called "Live Room Out", it's obscured first by the footer and then by the header.

Re: Google’s suggestion for a better infinite scroll?

#30

Post by timmclean »

digitaltoad wrote: post #18

Doesn't this still effectively break the back button or at least the users view of the back button? To the user although there are visual hints, he/she hasn't left the page. Scrolling down the page however creates multiple history entries.

Nope, this seems to use history.replaceState, not pushState: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/M...
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