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Why so much hate for infinite scrolls? What if your content is "infinite". I can't see a better way to handle that.

by hpen 6y ago

Elof 6y ago
My take is just because you can doesn't mean you should. It seems like there is no such thing as infinite content, and if you feel like you are in a case where there is adding constraints will probably improve your product/ux
- hpen 6y ago
  Any "online data" is virtually infinite. Online in the algorithmic sense, not the internet. Think Instagram or facebook
jlokier 6y ago
Infinite content can still be paginated, grouped, or whatever you like. For example think of Google search results. Pagination gives mental boundaries, navigation markers and shortcuts to items. Reading through infinite scrolling is psychologically addictive for a few reasons. Another complaint about infinite scrolling is more technical: Implementations tend to forget your location, and/or significantly change the data when you return to the page. So if you leave an infinite-scrolling page and come back to it, you often can't continue from where you branched off. In addition to not remembering the position and state, sometimes scrolling back down to where you were before takes a very long time. I've had occasions where I've had to scroll for ~20 minutes to reach an item I knew was there because I'd just seen it a few minutes prior, and forgot to use the "open in new tab" workaround when clicking on it. My bank's phone app is bad for this. Scrolling through my transaction history takes ages. If I want to look at last month, no problem. If I want to check a transaction from last year, I'll have to scroll down and wait for a bit more to load, over and over and over.... Then if I click the transaction to view details, then return back to the history to look at more, I have to do the whole annoying scroll-and-repeatedly-wait dance all over again. For every transaction I want to look at. And that's a mobile app not a browser, so no option to "open in a new tab". Mobile apps with all these flaws are horrible. (Thank goodness browsers provide the "open in new tab" workaround for webapps that have linkable items. Pity it's broken by badly written webapps that don't make items linkable.)
- hpen 6y ago
  Sure, there are plenty of bad implementations out there, but is that a reason to no use them at all? A DB tool I made has infinite scroll plus pagination buttons. It updates the pagination buttons while scrolling.
xemdetia 6y ago
The infinite scroll problem I feel comes up most that if there was a useful piece of information in the middle of an infinite scroll it is likely impossible for you to return there with any sort of reliability. You can't save the URL because it probably doesn't encode anything useful about where you are in a most cases. You can't logically organize 'where' this information is because its location is pure happenstance. It is pointlessly ephemeral. I can't start on page 5, I can't start on page 100. I have to scroll and just pray I get to get lucky which is the function of a slot machine, not someone who's trying to present me information. If I _really_ wanted to get that much more content I am more than happy to click the next button.
- hpen 6y ago
  You can have infinite scroll + pagination buttons
- henryfjordan 6y ago
  You don't dislike infinite scroll, you dislike "Social Media Feeds". Imagine you are on a blog and can scroll back through all the posts chronologically in an infinite scroll. The location of that data isn't happenstance. You can always address a particular post or scroll to a certain date. "Social Media Feeds" are bad not because they're infinite but because the sourcing algorithm is obscured from you likely to drive "increased engagement" or something nefarious like that. Pagination isn't going to fix social media feeds.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Why so much hate for infinite scrolls? What if your content is "infinite". I can't see a better way to handle that.

by hpen 6y ago

Why so much hate for infinite scrolls? What if your content is "infinite". I can't see a better way to handle that.

Elof 6y ago

My take is just because you can doesn't mean you should. It seems like there is no such thing as infinite content, and if you feel like you are in a case where there is adding constraints will probably improve your product/ux

hpen 6y ago
Any "online data" is virtually infinite. Online in the algorithmic sense, not the internet. Think Instagram or facebook

jlokier 6y ago

Infinite content can still be paginated, grouped, or whatever you like. For example think of Google search results. Pagination gives mental boundaries, navigation markers and shortcuts to items. Reading through infinite scrolling is psychologically addictive for a few reasons. Another complaint about infinite scrolling is more technical: Implementations tend to forget your location, and/or significantly change the data when you return to the page. So if you leave an infinite-scrolling page and come back to it, you often can't continue from where you branched off. In addition to not remembering the position and state, sometimes scrolling back down to where you were before takes a very long time. I've had occasions where I've had to scroll for ~20 minutes to reach an item I knew was there because I'd just seen it a few minutes prior, and forgot to use the "open in new tab" workaround when clicking on it. My bank's phone app is bad for this. Scrolling through my transaction history takes ages. If I want to look at last month, no problem. If I want to check a transaction from last year, I'll have to scroll down and wait for a bit more to load, over and over and over.... Then if I click the transaction to view details, then return back to the history to look at more, I have to do the whole annoying scroll-and-repeatedly-wait dance all over again. For every transaction I want to look at. And that's a mobile app not a browser, so no option to "open in a new tab". Mobile apps with all these flaws are horrible. (Thank goodness browsers provide the "open in new tab" workaround for webapps that have linkable items. Pity it's broken by badly written webapps that don't make items linkable.)

hpen 6y ago
Sure, there are plenty of bad implementations out there, but is that a reason to no use them at all? A DB tool I made has infinite scroll plus pagination buttons. It updates the pagination buttons while scrolling.

xemdetia 6y ago

The infinite scroll problem I feel comes up most that if there was a useful piece of information in the middle of an infinite scroll it is likely impossible for you to return there with any sort of reliability. You can't save the URL because it probably doesn't encode anything useful about where you are in a most cases. You can't logically organize 'where' this information is because its location is pure happenstance. It is pointlessly ephemeral. I can't start on page 5, I can't start on page 100. I have to scroll and just pray I get to get lucky which is the function of a slot machine, not someone who's trying to present me information. If I _really_ wanted to get that much more content I am more than happy to click the next button.

hpen 6y ago
You can have infinite scroll + pagination buttons
henryfjordan 6y ago
You don't dislike infinite scroll, you dislike "Social Media Feeds". Imagine you are on a blog and can scroll back through all the posts chronologically in an infinite scroll. The location of that data isn't happenstance. You can always address a particular post or scroll to a certain date. "Social Media Feeds" are bad not because they're infinite but because the sourcing algorithm is obscured from you likely to drive "increased engagement" or something nefarious like that. Pagination isn't going to fix social media feeds.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]