Not necessarily. Though it's true that many implementations have these problems, they're not inherent to infinite scroll. Regarding footers, who's to say the f

Not necessarily. Though it's true that many implementations have these problems, they're not inherent to infinite scroll. Regarding footers, who's to say the footer needs to go beneath the infinite scroll area? You could instead place the contents of the footer in a sidebar that stays in a fixed position. Alternatively the footer could be overlayed at the bottom of the page so it is always visible (a recent design trend would have it hide when the user scrolls down, but reappear when the user scrolls up). As for page numbers, there's nothing stopping you from adding them. Each item should probably have some sort of permalink to allow you access it directly, and there should be suitable navigation to allow you to find individual items. I find it quite sad that infinite scroll gets a bad rap due to poorly designed implementations. Perhaps it will get a better reputation if more websites actually put some thought into how infinite scroll is used.