Live data from Hacker News

Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

marco.org

1–10 of 45 posts

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#3
post #2

This was an annoyance for me, until I started using AutoPager. If you use Firefox, I highly recommend it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925

How does AutoPager work with sites (such as certain hardware review ones) which paginate content above the fold? I.e. how can it tell when I've finished reading and need to page?

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#4
This has been said before, but bears repeating. I like reading articles on Google News more than on most "non-aggregator" news sites just because Google News makes the news readable. What a lot of content creators don't seem to understand is, I don't care where the content comes from if it's a pain to read it.

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#5
I have always wondered how they can charge per page view for ads yet the advertisers be OK with this practice. Apparently they just turn a deaf ear to this problem and the consumer/reader suffers. You'd think they'd realize that if the person didn't click the ad the first time, they're likely not going to click it on the next page.

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#6
post #3
post #2

This was an annoyance for me, until I started using AutoPager. If you use Firefox, I highly recommend it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925

How does AutoPager work with sites (such as certain hardware review ones) which paginate content above the fold? I.e. how can it tell when I've finished reading and need to page?

AutoPager does an optimistic pre-fetch of extra content, meaning that while you're reading page 1, it's loading page 2; once you hit page 2 content, it begins fetching page 3, etc. It's likely a bit more complex than that, but ideally, with AutoPager in effect, you shouldn't ever realize you stopped reading page 1. :)

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#7

I have always wondered how they can charge per page view for ads yet the advertisers be OK with this practice. Apparently they just turn a deaf ear to this problem and the consumer/reader suffers. You'd think they'd realize that if the person didn't click the ad the first time, they're likely not going to click it on the next page.

Well, it's still two impressions. And if the second page has different ads then you have a new chance to click on one.

Also, some advertisers are interested in brand awareness; they don't care much about whether you click, they just want you to see their logo as many times as possible.

And look at it this way: if you have a long page of content, your ad is gone once the user scrolls down. If you have several short screens, your ad stays in view much longer.

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#8
...only a tiny percentage of viewers will actually read page two...

Actually, quite a large percentage of my readers click to page two. If only a tiny number of your readers are bothering to click a link to get the rest of your content, perhaps your content isn't very good.

Re: Dear Every Site That Paginates Articles

#10
post #9

Pagination breaks my articles in Instapaper, making it even more horrible: start reading an article on the train only to realize there's no page 2.

Fortunately most sites have a "print" view of their articles that puts it all in a single page that works fine with InstaPaper.
Post reply on HN