
Why not to use infinite scroll on your website - katzboaz
http://geeks.bizzabo.com/10-reasons-not-to-use-infinite-scroll-on-your-website
======
Sindisil
I personally despise infinite scroll, at least on mobile sites, as it limits:

1\. My ability to orient myself in the content. 2\. My ability to control my
consumption of the content (e.g., jump back to top, jump to end, jump to rough
internal location).

Some sites have added navigation buttons or tool bars, but, to be useful, they
must always be visible, so they take up valuable space that should be used for
content. Depending upon implementation, they can also be distracting.

There are certainly ways that navigation options could be restored while still
not significantly interfering with content, of course. If decent feedback of
current location were also provided, then infinite scroll could be OK.

Most content breaks down pretty naturally into some smaller increments, though
(pages, chapters, sections, topics, days -- whatever), so I think it typically
makes more sense to present it in that way.

Just because we _can_ do infinite scroll, doesn't mean we should.

------
EvilTrout
All these problems are solvable. I co-founded Discourse
([http://discourse.org](http://discourse.org)) which uses infinite scrolling
heavily. Discourse is also 100% open source so you can see how we did it.

My responses below:

> Users will lose the page length orientation - the browser scrollbar become
> useless.

We have a fixed "x/y" posts widget at the bottom with a progress bar.

> There’s no ability to jump to the end of the list.

The aforementioned widget has an up arrow and down arrow to jump to the
top/bottom.

> Your users will not be able to get back to the same in-page position in 1
> click.

We use replaceState to update the URL as they scroll. The back button works
fine, and you can link to any position in the topic.

> There’s no visible footer until your users come to the end of the
> list/content.

Isn't this true of all sites where the user scrolls anything? I guess the
difference is you see it more often with pagination. We instead have a fixed
header with navigation options and extra details.

> Slow Experience - You are using a lot of browser memory as the page scrolls
> down.

We unload posts that have scrolled off the screen. We released a library for
it too - [http://eviltrout.com/2014/01/04/hiding-offscreen-
ember.html](http://eviltrout.com/2014/01/04/hiding-offscreen-ember.html)

> If you switch away from the page by following a link there's no way of
> getting back to where you left off.

The back button works fine thanks to replaceState!

> Lack of sense of completion- no closure for users.

The progress bar and constantly increasing numbers in the widget help a lot.

> There’s no SEO opportunities for content located below the first scroll.

We serve up google indexable content just fine. See:
[http://eviltrout.com/2013/06/19/adding-support-for-search-
en...](http://eviltrout.com/2013/06/19/adding-support-for-search-engines-to-
your-javascript-applications.html)

> You lose the ability to bookmark a dedicated point of interest.

With replaceState and updating the URL, you can bookmark at any point and
return right back to where you left off.

> Distraction - The fear of missing out on data or other options will deter
> your users from completing an action.

I'm pretty sure this isn't relevant since we support all the above.

~~~
otikik
Excellent response.

Yet I feel compelled to ask: how much effort was invested in reaching such
degree of finesse?

Pagination is (usually) very easy to implement and can be done completely on
the server side. Your (very magnificent) solution sounds like it would require
days, if not weeks, to be implemented, and adds plenty of javascript to the
server-side part.

Do you think there's a "economy class" infinite scroll, or is it only viable
for sites with a big budget (in effort at least)?

~~~
jbeja
Good question, but you have to such fanboy when you ask?

~~~
otikik
Don't get jealous. You are gorgeous too <3

~~~
jbeja
Jelous for...? more like a cringe when i see to much azz-kissing ;|.

~~~
otikik
It's not ass kissing when it's true.

I'm not going to apologize for complimenting someone's work. If that makes you
cringe, then you will have to live with that. I think you will be happier if
you try to choose other things to get upset about.

------
Theodores
I don't hear P-interest users complaining. With some content you might want to
use a 'Masonry'/'Isotope' layout as P-interest does. That comes with a ragged
footer and doesn't really work unless you have infinite scroll.

As for the nonsense about 'never getting to the footer', the footer can be
stuck to the window or dispensed with entirely, again a-la P-interest.

It is very easy to put together a '10 reasons why I hate this' blog article,
it is much harder to put something together that works to the delight of
millions.

------
dntrkv
Infinite scroll can be implemented well, but more often than not it's
implementation is just terrible. Take Soundcloud for example. I love their
service, their UI is generally pretty good, their site is usually fast, and in
most cases, their product is a pleasure to use. But their implementation of
infinite scroll is terrible. I'm not sure what it is, I haven't troubleshooted
it too much but when you scroll a playlist with a lot of songs, every so
often, the pages repeat themselves. And sometimes when you scroll down below a
certain point it will just restart at page one.

So if I open a playlist with ~400 songs and I want to reach the bottom, there
is no way for me to do it but to just scroll really fast and wait for each
page to load. Okay, fine. But when I do this, usually about ~30% of the time
it will start repeating pages or it will just start feeding the playlist from
the first song again. In this case, I think infinite scroll does ruins the
experience. If anyone out there from Soundcloud is listening, please consider
implementing pagination.

------
wil421
Without going point by points to counter every reason I would like to say I
absolutely love continuous scrolling when I am shopping or looking at items on
a retailers website.

>Users will lose the page length orientation - the browser scrollbar become
useless.

This is entirely untrue I can still use my scrollbar to get back to the top of
the page again, it can also be used to easily skim the results that were
displayed.

For most retail shopping I actually would rather have this than pagination
especially if I am lazily browsing on my ipad, no reason to change hand
positions.

~~~
rlguarino
I really don't like continuous scrolling for retail shopping. its easier to
remember what page something was on than a relative position. I don't mind it
for pointless content consumption like Reddit and Facebook, because I rarely
ever want to go back to something on those platforms.

~~~
wil421
I can see your point.

The best use I have seen is a hybrid approach. Load 10 or so out of 100 items,
use continuos scroll to show the remanding 90 and then use pagination to
access the other results.

------
mbq
But please don't paginate a 500 word text into 10 pages either...

------
kzrdude
If you do use page numbering and next-links, please make the link to the next
page amply big. Really big please, you don't have much to lose.

~~~
bbarn
All the time I see people complaining about usage of HTML tables vs. pure CSS,
and yet the one thing that drives me absolutely insane is a 4 point smaller
than the rest "prev 1..3,4,5..10 next" navigation control at the bottom of a
page. Always a treat to use on mobile too :)

------
dillon
I feel like just implementing pushState would be enough to solve almost all of
these issues. Some simple design decisions could help with a few more of them.

I think saying flatly to not use infinite scroll lets me know that the writer
doesn't have much technical skill. Rather, stating the current issues with
infinite scroll and how to fix them is a million times more useful.

~~~
regularfry
What problem does infinite scroll solve? Why add the complexity of more code
which needs fix upon fix to get back functionality we already had? Getting
infinite scroll "right" takes a _lot_ of work (and nobody's done so yet, to my
knowledge). Knowing how to fix the issues might be useful, but being able to
spot that you don't need to incur the cost at all is so much more so.

------
m1117
I'm sure there're 10 reasons to use too. infinite scroll as opposed to
infinite pagination? I like infinite scroll, it's just fun. It's a lot about
the goal. If it's facebook or instagram, users won't go too far, they don't
have time and they check feed regularly, however for search infinite scroll
might be not the best fit

------
christiangenco
As an alternative, I'm going to start using something like
[http://emberjs.com/list-view/](http://emberjs.com/list-view/)

(warning: not mobile optimized)

It solves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 10, and could reasonably be implemented with
bookmarking to fix 6 and 9.

SEO is still an issue, but really, when is it not?

~~~
darrhiggs
For SEO use the next link relation[0] e.g. <a rel="next"
href="/resource?page={next_page_in_sequence}" />.

I am assuming more results are loaded based on scroll-depth < 100% + an
overlay to stop the user clicking.

Google/bots will be able to activate the link and request the next set.

 _Uesful resource_ [http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-
relation...](http://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-
relations.xhtml)

[0] [http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#link-type-
next](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/links.html#link-type-next)

------
hoilogoi
I drag the scrollbar and use pageup/down keys as much as I use the mousewheel.

I don't enjoy getting near the bottom of the page and suddenly being warped
several screens ahead, then having to go back and figure out where I was. Find
a way to prevent this if you're just loading comments to an article.

I find the scrollbar less disorienting because it has a high resolution than
most mousewheels, its feedback loop is tighter, and I can jump both short and
long distances; that is, there's no tradeoff between speed and continuousness.

I switch to pageup/pagedown/home/end on pages with infinite scroll because I
can be guaranteed I won't miss any content and it's just less tiresome that
using a mousewheel IMO.

A really stellar example of these sorts of bad user interaction is the Google
Art Project if anyone cares.

------
vkjv
What a pointless article. Every single one of these can be mitigated if not
completely re-mediated. It should be titled, "10 reasons why infinite scroll
takes more effort than you think."

------
Houshalter
What if browsers had dedicated support for infinite scrolling? Just like you
trust regular scrolling to the browser or even operating system rather than
implementing it yourself in javascript.

You could solve some of these problems, like the browser being able to
bookmark or get the url of a specific section, and standardizing the way it's
done.

------
gagege
#6 is the one I hate the most. Twitter does an alright job of taking you back
to where you were but most sites don't.

------
katzboaz
True the some of the issues can be solved, the problem is that most of the
sites are not solving it. Probably I could name it "Point to take into account
when implementing.. " I'm sure hope to see better implementations to infinity
scrolls on the web.

------
cliveowen
8) isn't absolutely true:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.it/2014/02/infinite-s...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.it/2014/02/infinite-
scroll-search-friendly.html)

------
pjbrunet
Ideally I'd prefer (rather than infinite scroll) progressive gzip and just
flush/chunk out more data all at once. Technically not infinite but fast,
simple and overall a better experience, in my opinion.

------
nathanappere
Number 7 is exacty what you want: [http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/08/the-webs-
slot-machine.html](http://www.nirandfar.com/2012/08/the-webs-slot-
machine.html)

------
abimaelmartell
Here's how linkedin does pagination

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkKYEmkCAAA3x8u.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BkKYEmkCAAA3x8u.png:large)

I think an infinite scroll would be better...

~~~
rlguarino
I think infinite scrolling would be much worse in that case.

------
hugobessa
These are for sure good reasons to not use infinite scroll. But I think this
is more like an implementation problem than a problem with infinite scroll
itself.

------
math0ne
The scroll bar things is such a serious issue i would never consider using
infinite scroll until that is dealt with on a browser level.

------
dblacc
infinite scrolling works for things like Facebook, Twitter or any other case
when you probably don't want the user to be alarmed by the amount of time
they've spent on a site..

If i saw 'page 11' on Facebook, i'd instantly think about all the time i just
wasted and try and be sure i didn't so that again.

------
kraag22
I totaly agree. It is really great, when you need to click on link in the
footer of the page, that keep running out.

------
ThomPete
As always it's never that simple.

Infinite scroll is great for browsing images. That's whats it's always been
good for.

~~~
misthop
Except it's not. Those image loads start to bring a heavy memory hit. It
especially stinks on mobile browsers.

~~~
ecnahc515
That's something that's fixable. It's just people who use infinite scroll
don't do a good job of fixing some of the problems of causes. But that doesn't
mean infinite scrolling is bad.

------
ivthreadp110
The use of infinite scrolling does have certain obstacles that have to be
taken into consideration. However- when done correctly it can be utilized
correctly. Making a simple system that loads content at the end of the page is
not enough- if you want to include infinite scrolling on your website you also
have to take in mind the memory issue (as pointed out by EvilTrout), as well
as other ways to dynamically update the url for book marking.

I am personally not a huge advocate of infinite scrolling (in most cases)but
if are you are a seasoned programmer, that's not to say there are practical
(and safe ways) to implement it.

If you want to launch a new site, and you have limited time (or are the only
programmer) it's not cost effective to spend hours and hours working out all
the kinks and make sure it's cross browser reliable etc... the novelty of
infinite scrolling is something you should avoid. But if you have a good need,
a good team (or yourself can spend time on thinking of all the various issues
with it)- there is no reason why you could not implement it successfully.

I will not be using infinite scrolling on the comment system I'm writing for
my start-up, pagination is good enough. But I will probably use it for the
scroll back on a chat window (no one generally bookmarks chat...)

I agree with rch- people are always resistant to change... when you have
something that removes a level of control- people freak out... new challenges
introduced does not mean that it's bad, it just means it's a whole new set of
things to think about. Humans are pretty resourceful. I liked the full
physical keyboard on an old Nokia I had- but I got used to the touch keyboard-
sure the touch keyboard is different, but there are many ways to make it
better, and a physical keyboard adds a lot of much bulk to the phone.

I agree with the title of the post-- there are many reasons NOT to use
infinite scrolling-- especially if it's just more of a novelty. But if done
correctly (for for the right kind of content) it can provide an enhanced user
experience.

My advice would to be: If you want to implement infinite scrolling-- make sure
A) if you want to use infinite scrolling think about the aspects you have to
deal with B) know general user's computer systems-- and how much memory you
want to capture, C) decide if it's worth all the time to make it work right.

"New technology and trends always have good applications- it is up to you to
decide if you are implementing it simply because it's trendy, because you want
to learn, or because you want to enrich the community- if it's the latter- the
best way to do is by sharing what you have learned, and learn from past
failures" \- Gus Anderson

------
badman_ting
And GOD HELP YOU if you have a page with a footer and infinite scroll.

------
dethtron5000
This would have been better if it infinitely scrolled.

~~~
patrickmay
They did finish with "Scroll down for 10 more." ;-)

------
kirkbackus
This really should be, 10 reasons illustrating the need for a more robust
infinite scroll. Most of these issues seem to be solvable. Except maybe the
footer thing, that's just dumb.

------
Raphmedia
Most of those issues can be fixed.

------
teemo_cute
Infinite scrolling also consumes a lot of memory since resources like images
pile-up endlessly.

Compare that to a page-number navigation scheme where only the displayed
resources on a given page are loaded.

Not everyone has a fast computer (or tablet).

~~~
prepost
There are ways around that, too. I'm sure there are better descriptions but
just for example: [http://engineering.linkedin.com/linkedin-
ipad-5-techniques-s...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/linkedin-
ipad-5-techniques-smooth-infinite-scrolling-html5)

