The case against online pagination
October 2, 2012 11:05 AM Subscribe
Well, duh. I don't even need to read your article at all. Huzzah for the zero page article!
posted by axiom at 11:08 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by axiom at 11:08 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
Somebody's got to pay. Ad impressions are a horribly inefficient way to do so but what would be better?
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:09 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by 2bucksplus at 11:09 AM on October 2, 2012
Using the word "evil" to mean "annoying" should also probably stop.
Still though, I agree that splitting articles into multiple pages is bad and needs to stop.
posted by bondcliff at 11:09 AM on October 2, 2012 [16 favorites]
Still though, I agree that splitting articles into multiple pages is bad and needs to stop.
posted by bondcliff at 11:09 AM on October 2, 2012 [16 favorites]
Actually, I thought that the real reason why they split up pages was because early web browsers, running on dial-up modems, couldn't handle so much information at once.
posted by Melismata at 11:10 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by Melismata at 11:10 AM on October 2, 2012
Ad impressions are a horribly inefficient way to do so but what would be better?
Are we even sure it raises ad revenue? People are just going to stop reading after one page or follow links to the single-page version.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:10 AM on October 2, 2012
Are we even sure it raises ad revenue? People are just going to stop reading after one page or follow links to the single-page version.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:10 AM on October 2, 2012
...obvious no-no that should have gone out with blinky text, dancing cat animations...
Dancing cat animations went out?
posted by gurple at 11:11 AM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
Dancing cat animations went out?
posted by gurple at 11:11 AM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
I actually don't mind paginated text articles, especially if they offer a 1-page option. It's the photo galleries that kill me. InFocus and The Big Picture have shown you can make a 1-page gallery look fantastic and convey a lot, making people click 25 times to see more images is the most crass and annoying thing on major news websites today.
posted by mathowie at 11:11 AM on October 2, 2012 [10 favorites]
posted by mathowie at 11:11 AM on October 2, 2012 [10 favorites]
When I told my wife that I was writing about the scourge of multipage articles, she responded, “That seems like a … weak topic for an article.” She also told me she likes when articles are split into multiple pages. I’ll get to that argument below; needless to say, that woman is no longer my wife.
Heh.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:12 AM on October 2, 2012 [11 favorites]
Heh.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:12 AM on October 2, 2012 [11 favorites]
What if it's a 30-page gallery of Rush Limbaugh photos though.
posted by elizardbits at 11:13 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by elizardbits at 11:13 AM on October 2, 2012
making people click 25 times to see more images is the most crass and annoying thing on major news websites today.
A friend who works at a major daily newspaper tells me that the editors love photo galleries and keep asking for MORE MORE MORE.
posted by josher71 at 11:13 AM on October 2, 2012
A friend who works at a major daily newspaper tells me that the editors love photo galleries and keep asking for MORE MORE MORE.
posted by josher71 at 11:13 AM on October 2, 2012
Somebody's got to pay. Ad impressions are a horribly inefficient way to do so but what would be better?
If you scroll down in the linked article, there may be some answers for you.
To not be completely snarky, look at the example of The Verge.
posted by bonehead at 11:18 AM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
If you scroll down in the linked article, there may be some answers for you.
To not be completely snarky, look at the example of The Verge.
posted by bonehead at 11:18 AM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
I have a bigger problem with needlessly inflammatory headlines designed as linkbait, tied to articles whose page of content could have been be summed up in a sentence or two.
posted by dubold at 11:21 AM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by dubold at 11:21 AM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
i like stuff that sidescrolls. make it move left to right. i don't care, use "html #5" if you have to.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:29 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:29 AM on October 2, 2012
FYI, for anyone who uses "augmented browsing" / user scripts / Greasemonkey there are many designed to de-paginate articles on various sites.
posted by XMLicious at 11:32 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by XMLicious at 11:32 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
The truly daring are making it scroll right-to-left.
posted by jepler at 11:33 AM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by jepler at 11:33 AM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
i like stuff that sidescrolls. make it move left to right. i don't care, use "html #5" if you have to.
Your idea is bad and you should feel bad. Ew ew ew sidescrolling.
posted by kmz at 11:33 AM on October 2, 2012 [10 favorites]
Your idea is bad and you should feel bad. Ew ew ew sidescrolling.
posted by kmz at 11:33 AM on October 2, 2012 [10 favorites]
On a scale of 1 -10 where 1 is hugs and puppies and 10 is genocide, side scrolling is like 257.
posted by elizardbits at 11:35 AM on October 2, 2012 [14 favorites]
posted by elizardbits at 11:35 AM on October 2, 2012 [14 favorites]
I ENJOY NY TIMES ONLINE ARTICLES. There the give you the choice of split page sor All On one Page. You decide.
posted by Postroad at 11:35 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by Postroad at 11:35 AM on October 2, 2012
As soon as I spot one of those galleries, I'm out of there. I do have a weakness for the inane lists Complex Magazine puts out, which unfortunately use that heinous dizzying slide animation.
posted by Lorin at 11:39 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by Lorin at 11:39 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
TOP 10 REASONS WHY PAGINATED LISTS ARE SUCKY LINKBAIT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NEXT>>
posted by Artw at 11:39 AM on October 2, 2012 [10 favorites]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NEXT>>
posted by Artw at 11:39 AM on October 2, 2012 [10 favorites]
As usual, it seems I'm the slightly weird one.
I really like articles all on one page, and I'm fully behind the idea of ridding ourselves of pagination on the Web, forever. 100% behind it. I could see breaks at chapter length, but pages are just too short.
But I actually rather like the one-picture-at-a-time slide shows, much of the time. In thinking about it, I realized that I like this approach when the pictures are of very high quality. Like, say, that NY Times article about Cuba a couple weeks ago. If the pictures are genuinely worth clicking through them, one at a time, and truly looking at each one, then a slideshow format is fine.
But if they're just normal pictures, I'd rather get a quick overview of everything, letting me zoom in on the ones I'm interested in.
tl;dr version: kill pages forever. National Geographic can show me their pictures any way they want to. Your P&S snaps, however, are probably best in thumbnail form, on a page with lots of thumbnails.
posted by Malor at 11:41 AM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
I really like articles all on one page, and I'm fully behind the idea of ridding ourselves of pagination on the Web, forever. 100% behind it. I could see breaks at chapter length, but pages are just too short.
But I actually rather like the one-picture-at-a-time slide shows, much of the time. In thinking about it, I realized that I like this approach when the pictures are of very high quality. Like, say, that NY Times article about Cuba a couple weeks ago. If the pictures are genuinely worth clicking through them, one at a time, and truly looking at each one, then a slideshow format is fine.
But if they're just normal pictures, I'd rather get a quick overview of everything, letting me zoom in on the ones I'm interested in.
tl;dr version: kill pages forever. National Geographic can show me their pictures any way they want to. Your P&S snaps, however, are probably best in thumbnail form, on a page with lots of thumbnails.
posted by Malor at 11:41 AM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
Slideshows are a debatable edge case. When the "slides" are just pictures illustrating some copy they need to die though.
posted by Artw at 11:43 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by Artw at 11:43 AM on October 2, 2012
Hah, I was reading and scrolling, and I saw the screenshot of the " PAGE 1 2 ... 6 " and had an instinctual "oh NO you didn't" before I scrolled further and saw the caption. Derp.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 11:47 AM on October 2, 2012 [8 favorites]
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 11:47 AM on October 2, 2012 [8 favorites]
I was reading and scrolling, and I saw the screenshot of the " PAGE 1 2 ... 6 " and had an instinctual "oh NO you didn't" before I scrolled further and saw the caption.
I did the same exact double take. My local newspaper does not have a View as a Single Page option that I can find. As if it wasn't already bad enough.
posted by vortex genie 2 at 11:50 AM on October 2, 2012
I did the same exact double take. My local newspaper does not have a View as a Single Page option that I can find. As if it wasn't already bad enough.
posted by vortex genie 2 at 11:50 AM on October 2, 2012
But if you click on this article from the front page, it's on two pages, where the last page just has the PS.
posted by jeather at 11:53 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by jeather at 11:53 AM on October 2, 2012
Actually, I thought that the real reason why they split up pages was because early web browsers, running on dial-up modems, couldn't handle so much information at once.
It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation.
A single small image takes up much, much, much more bandwidth than an acre of text. And we had images even back in the dark ages of NCSA Mosaic.
posted by ook at 11:53 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation.
A single small image takes up much, much, much more bandwidth than an acre of text. And we had images even back in the dark ages of NCSA Mosaic.
posted by ook at 11:53 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
Hah, I was reading and scrolling, and I saw the screenshot of the " PAGE 1 2 ... 6 " and had an instinctual "oh NO you didn't" before I scrolled further and saw the caption. Derp.
I clicked on SINGLE PAGE with great and terrible fury for about 30 seconds before realizing.
posted by elizardbits at 11:55 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
I clicked on SINGLE PAGE with great and terrible fury for about 30 seconds before realizing.
posted by elizardbits at 11:55 AM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
I realized that I like this approach when the pictures are of very high quality.
Good point. Sites that use slideshows bring to mind the worst sort of cluttered interfaces but that doesn't mean it can't be done well. A cleaner approach somewhat like flickr's slideshow at its best could be quite nice. I'd be happy to see them if anyone knows examples of sites that do slideshows right.
posted by Lorin at 11:56 AM on October 2, 2012
Good point. Sites that use slideshows bring to mind the worst sort of cluttered interfaces but that doesn't mean it can't be done well. A cleaner approach somewhat like flickr's slideshow at its best could be quite nice. I'd be happy to see them if anyone knows examples of sites that do slideshows right.
posted by Lorin at 11:56 AM on October 2, 2012
I like pages formatted for my iPad (like flip board), when I can just casually flip through them. I also don't mind ajaxy articles that only load part of it unless you click the full article link and it loads the rest in page. Multipage galleries and articles can die in a fire, though.
posted by empath at 11:57 AM on October 2, 2012
posted by empath at 11:57 AM on October 2, 2012
Yes I absolutely agree !
And let me tell you why [more inside]
posted by seawallrunner at 12:01 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
And let me tell you why [more inside]
posted by seawallrunner at 12:01 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
Is this where I have to admit I read Cracked.com? The pagination makes me crazy.
posted by ambrosia at 12:01 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by ambrosia at 12:01 PM on October 2, 2012
And we had images even back in the dark ages of NCSA Mosaic. -- ookThat fateful day in 1993, when Marc Andreessen wrote "I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag: IMG". He suggested XPM and XBM as the recommended formats.
posted by autopilot at 12:12 PM on October 2, 2012
There are some fucking terrible AJAXy/HTML5 mobile versions of sites out there at the moment. Say no to pages that greet you with spinners.
posted by Artw at 12:15 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by Artw at 12:15 PM on October 2, 2012
PRINT
posted by wallstreet1929 at 12:18 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by wallstreet1929 at 12:18 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
I like the slide shows that show one pic at a time as long as all they reload with each click is the next pic. When they re-load the entire page, ads and all, and add an entry to your back list GRAR.
posted by localroger at 12:34 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by localroger at 12:34 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
The worst are the pages that only offer a "print version" that puts the article in a tiny pop-up window that forces the print dialog to appear.
posted by jedicus at 12:42 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by jedicus at 12:42 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
But if you click on this article from the front page, it's on two pages, where the last page just has the PS.
That had to be on purpose.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:55 PM on October 2, 2012
That had to be on purpose.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:55 PM on October 2, 2012
Hah, I was reading and scrolling, and I saw the screenshot of the " PAGE 1 2 ... 6 " and had an instinctual "oh NO you didn't" before I scrolled further and saw the caption. Derp.
I've out-derped you as I ran screaming back here.
People get so used to the way things are though. I've give up trying to get my Television Without Pity loving friend to install Greasemonkey scripts to put the content on one page and get rid of those ad pop ups posing as underlined words. Even if something would improve his experience greatly he's just not having it.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:59 PM on October 2, 2012
I've out-derped you as I ran screaming back here.
People get so used to the way things are though. I've give up trying to get my Television Without Pity loving friend to install Greasemonkey scripts to put the content on one page and get rid of those ad pop ups posing as underlined words. Even if something would improve his experience greatly he's just not having it.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:59 PM on October 2, 2012
AND NO ONE KNOWS OR WANTS TO KNOW WHAT AN RSS FEED IS.
posted by yellowbinder at 1:00 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
posted by yellowbinder at 1:00 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
I don't mind clicking for slide shows if they're done with with AJAX, but complete page reloads are an abomination.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:20 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:20 PM on October 2, 2012
Even when they're done with AJAX, they almost never pre-load data. So the user experience is "click next... watch loading spinner... click next... watch loading spinner" instead of "click next. look at image. click next. look at image."
posted by Phssthpok at 1:27 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by Phssthpok at 1:27 PM on October 2, 2012
I know, it's so irritating. What's next .....
posted by benito.strauss at 1:31 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by benito.strauss at 1:31 PM on October 2, 2012
people splitting their sentences over multiple ....
posted by benito.strauss at 1:31 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by benito.strauss at 1:31 PM on October 2, 2012
posts? Man, that would get real tiresome really ....
posted by benito.strauss at 1:32 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by benito.strauss at 1:32 PM on October 2, 2012
quickly.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:32 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by benito.strauss at 1:32 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
Can you guess why the local TV news saves the lottery numbers for the final segment?
posted by davebush at 1:47 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by davebush at 1:47 PM on October 2, 2012
"The answer might suprise you!"
posted by Artw at 1:53 PM on October 2, 2012 [7 favorites]
posted by Artw at 1:53 PM on October 2, 2012 [7 favorites]
"Can you guess why the local TV news saves the lottery numbers for the final segment?"
Because they want to force you to pick up your iPad and go to the lottery web site?
posted by bz at 1:55 PM on October 2, 2012
Because they want to force you to pick up your iPad and go to the lottery web site?
posted by bz at 1:55 PM on October 2, 2012
Actually, I thought that the real reason why they split up pages was because early web browsers, running on dial-up modems, couldn't handle so much information at once.
It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation.
Well, I've been working on the Web for a while and yes, that was a rationale we used to justify what was also a convenient way to double-, triple-, quadruple- or quintuple-dip on the ad impressions; and it's something people were saying in the little second-tier online tech publishing empire I worked for up through the late oughts.
I don't say that to defend the practice, just to note that the urge for self justification is probably just as strong, if not stronger, than our urge to retcon Web publishingbestworst practices.
The ambiguously happy ending, by the way, was when we stopped being a second-rate tech publisher that was in it for the ad revenue and became the newest acquisition of a performance marketing company, at which point the SEO specialist stepped in and said "really, no SEO-optimized content should exceed 300 words and we intend to pay accordingly."
I remember being on a call with the CMS engineers for our new bosses after being acquired. They asked us if there were any features that were missing before they converted all our content. My boss said, "well, how do we paginate articles?" and the engineers were quiet for a moment then said, "you can't do that ... you're supposed to trim out the words that make the articles longer than the sidebar."
Second ambiguously happy ending: Panda whupped on those people.
posted by mph at 2:04 PM on October 2, 2012
It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation.
Well, I've been working on the Web for a while and yes, that was a rationale we used to justify what was also a convenient way to double-, triple-, quadruple- or quintuple-dip on the ad impressions; and it's something people were saying in the little second-tier online tech publishing empire I worked for up through the late oughts.
I don't say that to defend the practice, just to note that the urge for self justification is probably just as strong, if not stronger, than our urge to retcon Web publishing
The ambiguously happy ending, by the way, was when we stopped being a second-rate tech publisher that was in it for the ad revenue and became the newest acquisition of a performance marketing company, at which point the SEO specialist stepped in and said "really, no SEO-optimized content should exceed 300 words and we intend to pay accordingly."
I remember being on a call with the CMS engineers for our new bosses after being acquired. They asked us if there were any features that were missing before they converted all our content. My boss said, "well, how do we paginate articles?" and the engineers were quiet for a moment then said, "you can't do that ... you're supposed to trim out the words that make the articles longer than the sidebar."
Second ambiguously happy ending: Panda whupped on those people.
posted by mph at 2:04 PM on October 2, 2012
make it move left to right.
No. Never do this. Horizontal scrolling is bad. No, really, horizontal scrolling is not good.
posted by asnider at 2:04 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
No. Never do this. Horizontal scrolling is bad. No, really, horizontal scrolling is not good.
posted by asnider at 2:04 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
I am put into a rage when I get to the bottom of a page and see:
Page 2 | View Full Article
THEY DO THE EXACT SAME THING! WHY DO YOU NEED TWO LINKS?
posted by Quonab at 2:14 PM on October 2, 2012
Page 2 | View Full Article
THEY DO THE EXACT SAME THING! WHY DO YOU NEED TWO LINKS?
posted by Quonab at 2:14 PM on October 2, 2012
There are greasemonkey scripts for twop? I am so looking for those when I get to my computer. (I wouldn't even try twop on my phone...the horror...the horror.)
posted by dejah420 at 2:17 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by dejah420 at 2:17 PM on October 2, 2012
I agree with TFA, this FPP, and the comments in it.
I am trying to figure out what to do with my sad little strangely angled front yard, so the other day I was looking for before-after photos for ideas. All of those home-magazine TLC channel sites are set up the same way: 10 before-afters means 20 click-throughs not including the ad placed after every fourth image, which means you can't actually see before and after together, you have to click back and forth. Oh, but clicking "back" doesn't work half the time because the ad doesn't reload in reverse so the browser doesn't know where to go. Grar.
posted by headnsouth at 2:19 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
I am trying to figure out what to do with my sad little strangely angled front yard, so the other day I was looking for before-after photos for ideas. All of those home-magazine TLC channel sites are set up the same way: 10 before-afters means 20 click-throughs not including the ad placed after every fourth image, which means you can't actually see before and after together, you have to click back and forth. Oh, but clicking "back" doesn't work half the time because the ad doesn't reload in reverse so the browser doesn't know where to go. Grar.
posted by headnsouth at 2:19 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
THEY DO THE EXACT SAME THING! WHY DO YOU NEED TWO LINKS?
They don't do the exact same thing:
The first link points to page 2 of the article, the second link points to the non-paginated (a.k.a. single-page, a.k.a. "printer friendly") version of the article. Those are two separate pages that lead to a different part of the article, ostensibly to either save you the agonizing wait of loading the entire article in one shot or to thoughtfully provide you with a way to dump the article out to a sheet of paper so you can pack it in your briefcase and read it on the train, or maybe write "YES" in big red letters on your copy and hand it to an underling for immediate implementation, as decision-makers are wont to do.
I think a lot of pagination navigation stupidity comes because a developer got tired and quit before working out how to count pages and appropriately react to where the reader is in an array of pages. So you get:
First Page | Page 1 of 2 | Last Page
First Page | Page 2 of 2 | Last Page
There's a somewhat sensible:
Page 1 of 4 »
« Page 2 of 4 »
« Page 4 of 4
but I've seen that screwed up to:
« Page 1 of 1 »
where both links send you back to page you're on, if you're the sort to click them (or hover them to see if maybe they're actually a door into Fillory).
posted by mph at 2:36 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
They don't do the exact same thing:
The first link points to page 2 of the article, the second link points to the non-paginated (a.k.a. single-page, a.k.a. "printer friendly") version of the article. Those are two separate pages that lead to a different part of the article, ostensibly to either save you the agonizing wait of loading the entire article in one shot or to thoughtfully provide you with a way to dump the article out to a sheet of paper so you can pack it in your briefcase and read it on the train, or maybe write "YES" in big red letters on your copy and hand it to an underling for immediate implementation, as decision-makers are wont to do.
I think a lot of pagination navigation stupidity comes because a developer got tired and quit before working out how to count pages and appropriately react to where the reader is in an array of pages. So you get:
First Page | Page 1 of 2 | Last Page
First Page | Page 2 of 2 | Last Page
There's a somewhat sensible:
Page 1 of 4 »
« Page 2 of 4 »
« Page 4 of 4
but I've seen that screwed up to:
« Page 1 of 1 »
where both links send you back to page you're on, if you're the sort to click them (or hover them to see if maybe they're actually a door into Fillory).
posted by mph at 2:36 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
Well, I've been working on the Web for a while and yes, that was a rationale we used to justify what was also a convenient way to double-, triple-, quadruple- or quintuple-dip on the ad impressions; and it's something people were saying in the little second-tier online tech publishing empire I worked for up through the late oughts.
I've been working on the Web for a while too (since 1994.) If people were saying that in your company, those people were either lying or badly misinformed. Each one of your ads took up more bandwidth than the entire unpaginated article would have.
In the days when 14.4 modems were still a thing we had to consider when building websites, we were very careful to shave every spare byte off our images (I got really good at hand-editing GIFs for better RLE). But text we considered free, because even on the slowest modems it loaded faster than people could read. Paginated articles came about purely and only because of ads; the bandwidth thing was a post facto rationalization that never had a grain of truth to it.
posted by ook at 2:50 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
I've been working on the Web for a while too (since 1994.) If people were saying that in your company, those people were either lying or badly misinformed. Each one of your ads took up more bandwidth than the entire unpaginated article would have.
In the days when 14.4 modems were still a thing we had to consider when building websites, we were very careful to shave every spare byte off our images (I got really good at hand-editing GIFs for better RLE). But text we considered free, because even on the slowest modems it loaded faster than people could read. Paginated articles came about purely and only because of ads; the bandwidth thing was a post facto rationalization that never had a grain of truth to it.
posted by ook at 2:50 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
Is this the complaints department? Because I want to register my disapproval of Javascript pop-up slide shows. Where do they get off breaking my "open in new window", and "back" buttons? They never work properly on my mobile and don't get me started on the poorly coded ones that render images too big for the screen, but don't provide scroll bars so you're INDEFINITELY STUCK LOOKING AT WHATEVER STUPID IMAGE BROKE YOUR BROWSER.
Phew, that felt better. How long until I can expect a response?
posted by Popular Ethics at 3:01 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
Phew, that felt better. How long until I can expect a response?
posted by Popular Ethics at 3:01 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
Popular Ethics: Phew, that felt better. How long until I can expect a response?
I'll pencil you in for February 30.
posted by Malor at 3:05 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
I'll pencil you in for February 30.
posted by Malor at 3:05 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
this, a thousand times. At the very least we should have keys that act as PgUp&PgDown, automatically loading the previous or next page of data .
posted by 3mendo at 3:40 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by 3mendo at 3:40 PM on October 2, 2012
MY current drive-me-nuts is, was, and probably will remain the 'do you want to sign up for our site' popup on sites that have been linked to that I have no major interest in but for that one article linked to it from, oh, say, MetaFilter.
It doesn't help that these things are a) huge and b) tend to be larger than the screen on my phone while not allowing scrolling, so if I'm reading it while on the bus or something, I end up having to just close the window and open it again and go 'maybe I'll give a shit about it later to read on the computer when I get home'.
(sites that go HEY LOOK WE HAVE A MOBILE APP GET OUR MOBILE APP PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET OUR MOBILE APP OR WE WON'T SHOW YOU ANYTHING are #2, and "Fuck what you want, we're taking you to our mobile site front page instead of to the page we want, where you have no way of getting to what you want because we also have no search" sites are #3.)
posted by mephron at 4:40 PM on October 2, 2012 [5 favorites]
It doesn't help that these things are a) huge and b) tend to be larger than the screen on my phone while not allowing scrolling, so if I'm reading it while on the bus or something, I end up having to just close the window and open it again and go 'maybe I'll give a shit about it later to read on the computer when I get home'.
(sites that go HEY LOOK WE HAVE A MOBILE APP GET OUR MOBILE APP PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET OUR MOBILE APP OR WE WON'T SHOW YOU ANYTHING are #2, and "Fuck what you want, we're taking you to our mobile site front page instead of to the page we want, where you have no way of getting to what you want because we also have no search" sites are #3.)
posted by mephron at 4:40 PM on October 2, 2012 [5 favorites]
Ironically, the Slate page did exactly that obnoxious mobile app thing when i went to it on my ipad.
posted by empath at 4:44 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by empath at 4:44 PM on October 2, 2012
ook, I think you're responding to a point I was not not trying to make, but maybe I was responding to a point you were not trying to make and am doing so a second time:
Melismata said "Actually, I thought that the real reason why they split up pages was because early web browsers, running on dial-up modems, couldn't handle so much information at once," to which you replied "It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation," to which I was trying to say, "no, that's not a weird retrofit. Some people believed that was a legitimate reason."
"Slow modems and early browser limitations" might not be good or technically legitimate reasons for why people paginated articles, but it was still why some people did it. I know because:
a. I worked with them and they said so at the time.
and
b. No less an authority on mid-'90s Web development than David "Creating Killer Websites" Siegel said on page 78 of his book that until browser developers reinvented scrollbars, scrolling of any sort was to be avoided and that pagination was preferred to "pages that keep loading and loading and loading." In fact, he even offered a rule of thumb: Require no more than six screens of scrolling.
I bring Siegel into it to illustrate that the idea was sort of out there, floating around, and that you could read it in a nice book from someone who was considered an expert then.
I know the exact page, by the way, because I kept my copy of Creating Killer Websites in the vain hope that someday we all really will just punt and go with a combination of PDF and Shockwave.
Minor edit to add something I had in my editor that didn't make it over to the textarea: I think the "scrolling is bad for usability" thing probably held on a lot longer as a rationalization for pagination than modem speeds. I also think that the people using it around me meant to do so in good faith, not out of naked greed. It was just the bosses nodding along and saying "whatever it takes to get you to split ten paragraphs over ten pages."
Was that a fair use of the edit window?
posted by mph at 5:15 PM on October 2, 2012
Melismata said "Actually, I thought that the real reason why they split up pages was because early web browsers, running on dial-up modems, couldn't handle so much information at once," to which you replied "It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation," to which I was trying to say, "no, that's not a weird retrofit. Some people believed that was a legitimate reason."
"Slow modems and early browser limitations" might not be good or technically legitimate reasons for why people paginated articles, but it was still why some people did it. I know because:
a. I worked with them and they said so at the time.
and
b. No less an authority on mid-'90s Web development than David "Creating Killer Websites" Siegel said on page 78 of his book that until browser developers reinvented scrollbars, scrolling of any sort was to be avoided and that pagination was preferred to "pages that keep loading and loading and loading." In fact, he even offered a rule of thumb: Require no more than six screens of scrolling.
I bring Siegel into it to illustrate that the idea was sort of out there, floating around, and that you could read it in a nice book from someone who was considered an expert then.
I know the exact page, by the way, because I kept my copy of Creating Killer Websites in the vain hope that someday we all really will just punt and go with a combination of PDF and Shockwave.
Minor edit to add something I had in my editor that didn't make it over to the textarea: I think the "scrolling is bad for usability" thing probably held on a lot longer as a rationalization for pagination than modem speeds. I also think that the people using it around me meant to do so in good faith, not out of naked greed. It was just the bosses nodding along and saying "whatever it takes to get you to split ten paragraphs over ten pages."
Was that a fair use of the edit window?
posted by mph at 5:15 PM on October 2, 2012
Scroll bars got reinvented. We use mouse wheels for that now.
posted by localroger at 5:40 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by localroger at 5:40 PM on October 2, 2012
mph, I think we're both saying pretty much the same thing: some people did claim that was the reason; those people were either misinformed, or they were lying. (I've worked my share of mid- and low-tier gigs; I'm well familiar with the cognitive dissonance of trying to come up with a halfway reasonable excuse to justify what the bosses asked for in the first place...)
As for the Siegel thing -- gah, I'd almost blocked out that weird fetishization of "above the fold". You're right, that hung on for way too many years, and probably was a much more influential justification for pagination than the bandwidth thing (if only by virtue of being not quite so obviously false.)
posted by ook at 6:31 PM on October 2, 2012
As for the Siegel thing -- gah, I'd almost blocked out that weird fetishization of "above the fold". You're right, that hung on for way too many years, and probably was a much more influential justification for pagination than the bandwidth thing (if only by virtue of being not quite so obviously false.)
posted by ook at 6:31 PM on October 2, 2012
I'd almost blocked out that weird fetishization of "above the fold"
So had I...until just now. Dear GOD, the years I spent in the web design department alongside the (dying) print department, who were nevertheless treated as the "Old Guard" and were to be obeyed at all times.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:34 PM on October 2, 2012
So had I...until just now. Dear GOD, the years I spent in the web design department alongside the (dying) print department, who were nevertheless treated as the "Old Guard" and were to be obeyed at all times.
posted by ShutterBun at 6:34 PM on October 2, 2012
Screens are bigger too.
There are many things you, or David Seigel In the 90s might want to keep "above the fold" - important navigation, some indication of what site you are on, the title the of the page you are looking at, but the entirety of the text of a long article is not one and never was.
posted by Artw at 6:39 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
There are many things you, or David Seigel In the 90s might want to keep "above the fold" - important navigation, some indication of what site you are on, the title the of the page you are looking at, but the entirety of the text of a long article is not one and never was.
posted by Artw at 6:39 PM on October 2, 2012 [1 favorite]
Split articles are impossible to read when data service is interrupted by entering the subway (Chicago, not sure if other cities are any better), so this design is the #1 thing that will keep me from opening an article, period, during my prime morning reading time. Surprised nobody else has mentioned this beef...
posted by macrowave at 6:50 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by macrowave at 6:50 PM on October 2, 2012
Somebody's got to pay. Ad blockquoteare a horribly inefficient way to do so but what would be better?What prevents people from stuffing multiple ads on the page that you see as you scroll down the page?
Actually, I thought that the real reason why they split up pages was because early web browsers, running on dial-up modems, couldn't handle so much information at once.Yeah, no. Browsers could "handle" plenty of text. In fact, pagination was awful on modems because you would have to interrupt your reading and wait like 5, 10 or 20 seconds for the next "page" to load for no reason.
It's weird how we retrofit our memory of history to match our current situation.
On the other hand, it was all one page, you could load the entire thing, then read it. And you could right click and open new windows for new articles and have those load in the background.
That said, Jakob Nielson was a big promoter of breaking up pages because "users didn't know how to scroll"
posted by delmoi at 6:55 PM on October 2, 2012
Just a random note: I'm a big fan of Wired's Raw File blog about photography and I always always always hated that they used pagination for slide shows.
And then I realized they had a "view all" button to see them all in one page.
Just, you know, in case anyone else was annoyed like me...
posted by ztdavis at 7:05 PM on October 2, 2012
And then I realized they had a "view all" button to see them all in one page.
Just, you know, in case anyone else was annoyed like me...
posted by ztdavis at 7:05 PM on October 2, 2012
TOP 10 REASONS WHY PAGINATED LISTS ARE SUCKY LINKBAIT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NEXT>
I think you mean top 9 reasons, and on the 10th page there's a catalog of other slideshows.
Counting wrong makes multi-page content even worse.
posted by emelenjr at 7:44 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NEXT>
I think you mean top 9 reasons, and on the 10th page there's a catalog of other slideshows.
Counting wrong makes multi-page content even worse.
posted by emelenjr at 7:44 PM on October 2, 2012 [3 favorites]
This silly greedy desperate problem is the moment right where I fell out of love with my intarwebs
posted by Fupped Duck at 9:03 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by Fupped Duck at 9:03 PM on October 2, 2012
you know what, i don't have to justify myself to you, i like slideshow style and changing pages with the arrow keys
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 9:37 PM on October 2, 2012
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 9:37 PM on October 2, 2012
We run stories of 2,000, 4,000, even 6,000 words, and to run that much text down a single page can daunt and depress a reader.I thought things had finally turned around, but then I hit that page with 6,000 words.
Damitall, what's the point of anything?
posted by Zed at 11:19 PM on October 2, 2012 [2 favorites]
Pagination is a minor, death-by-a-thousand-cuts, annoyance when you have a fast enough connection that the only delay is the time it takes to click.
But when you're using an old work machine, with the last version of Internet Explorer, and it took almost a minute after clicking before you were able to move the goddamn mouse, and why the hell is there >10mb of crap surrounding 50kb of relevant text Washington Post -- that "Page 1-2-3-4" at the bottom feels like page design courtesy of Satan himself.
posted by rollick at 2:54 AM on October 3, 2012
But when you're using an old work machine, with the last version of Internet Explorer, and it took almost a minute after clicking before you were able to move the goddamn mouse, and why the hell is there >10mb of crap surrounding 50kb of relevant text Washington Post -- that "Page 1-2-3-4" at the bottom feels like page design courtesy of Satan himself.
posted by rollick at 2:54 AM on October 3, 2012
I've give up trying to get my Television Without Pity loving friend to install Greasemonkey scripts to put the content on one page and get rid of those ad pop ups posing as underlined words.
The random underlined/highlighted words are incredibly, wildly awful, to the point where it essentially prevents me from reading what content I otherwise might. But anyway.
I am only mildly annoyed by paginated articles when I'm sitting at my desk, but as others have noted, when I'm reading on mobile -- which is more and more common -- I'm hugely annoyed by them and am likely to skip them and never return to the piece. I also believe that if you have a three-page piece, that's within the bounds of reason, but once you're asking people to click through a 15-page story on the internet, that's ... pressing your luck and trying people's patience.
And I don't have any problem with slideshows generally, as long as (and somebody has said this already) they just slide you to the next slide instead of reloading the entire page. I find that an increasing number of places (including where I work) do their slideshows this way, but where they don't, I usually can't be bothered to click through.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 5:19 AM on October 3, 2012
The random underlined/highlighted words are incredibly, wildly awful, to the point where it essentially prevents me from reading what content I otherwise might. But anyway.
I am only mildly annoyed by paginated articles when I'm sitting at my desk, but as others have noted, when I'm reading on mobile -- which is more and more common -- I'm hugely annoyed by them and am likely to skip them and never return to the piece. I also believe that if you have a three-page piece, that's within the bounds of reason, but once you're asking people to click through a 15-page story on the internet, that's ... pressing your luck and trying people's patience.
And I don't have any problem with slideshows generally, as long as (and somebody has said this already) they just slide you to the next slide instead of reloading the entire page. I find that an increasing number of places (including where I work) do their slideshows this way, but where they don't, I usually can't be bothered to click through.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 5:19 AM on October 3, 2012
Whenever I click on something that I think is going to be an article, and it turns out to be a slide show, I frequently say, "fuck this," and click out of there. # of page hits they got from me there: 1 rather than 20.
I also hate what Salon does with the "click for more" thing and then frequently IT DOESN'T WORK, so you can't even read more unless you can find the print button.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:59 PM on October 3, 2012
I also hate what Salon does with the "click for more" thing and then frequently IT DOESN'T WORK, so you can't even read more unless you can find the print button.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:59 PM on October 3, 2012
It's an advertising business model.
You hate it? Your options:
You hate it? Your options:
- Regulate the business model.
- Write a browser plugin that's smart enough to dynamically construct a single-page version.
- Realize the content on these sites is shit anyway and never visit one again.
Not that tricky to just give people options really.
posted by gomichild at 2:39 AM on October 4, 2012
posted by gomichild at 2:39 AM on October 4, 2012
I use two spaces after a period. I know why it was necessary. I understand why it's no longer needed. I don't care.
And I also use Oxford commas. Come at me bro.
posted by ChipT at 5:54 PM on October 6, 2012 [3 favorites]
And I also use Oxford commas. Come at me bro.
posted by ChipT at 5:54 PM on October 6, 2012 [3 favorites]
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