

Stop Pagination Now - zonotope
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/10/website_pagination_stories_should_load_into_a_single_page_every_time_.html

======
djloche
>"Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages
can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads—though in
practice it doesn’t because lots of readers never bother to click past the
first page."

As much as I hate it and would love to think that pagination is just a
publication pipedream, it's not.

Some online publications have spent (and will spend if they're interested in
making $) significant time and $ A/B testing various levels of pagination such
that their sites are optimized so that there are just fewer pages than their
readership is unwilling to tolerate.

The end result is that their sites are optimized to make the most amount of
money. If it didn't improve their revenues, they wouldn't be doing it.

Of course, there are copycats that don't do the testing, don't optimize for
their niche of readers, and are probably losing both money and readers because
of it.

We can argue about publications adopting different business models, but that's
a different story. Advertisers pay a premium for engaged, targeted niche
audiences that match their products/services. That's the reality of the online
advertising market.

~~~
0r3jq4a0j
_If it didn't improve their revenues, they wouldn't be doing it._

I can assure you that this is absolutely not the case. If you look at Plotz's
comment, it's exactly what most editors will say:

 _Pages that run too long can irritate readers. 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. So pagination can make pages seem more welcoming,
more chewable._

They really believe this.

It's important to realize that despite all the buzz about A/B testing in the
industry, editors pretty universally believe they don't need to validate their
opinions through testing. Why not? Because though school and their careers
they've been told that their opinions matter, and, in fact, that's all their
job really is: voicing opinions and making judgements, because they believe
they have special insight into what readers want.

Look no further than Poltz, a writer and editor with no software design or
development experience, who somehow believes he's qualified to make that
statement.

~~~
joshuarrrr
I'll ignore your general disdain for writers and editors, and point out that
not all readers want the same thing. I've pushed for non-paginated articles at
my publication, but I admit that I'm not always happy with the result, and we
do hear reader complaints about not being able to orient themselves in an
article like this: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-
cosmolog...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmological-
supercomputer)

(hopefully a wider content-well after an upcoming redesign will help)

I'm curious to hear what people think of a hybrid pagination system, like that
currently used by Computing Now magazine. I like that it gives the user a
sense of the article length without interrupting the flow of reading.
[http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/careers/cont...](http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/careers/content?g=53319&type=article&urlTitle=transitioning-
from-software-to-software-assurance)

~~~
0r3jq4a0j
_your general disdain for writers and editors_

It's completely justified. For example: show me where in Poltz's long career
as a writer and editor that he secretly squeezed in the years of UX, design,
and development experience that qualifies him to make a statement about
designing user interfaces.

The problem is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise
here or that it requires anything beyond their insight.

 _I admit that I'm not always happy with the result
...[http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-
cosmolog...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmological-
supercomputer) _

This design doesn't incorporate many of the base standards for displaying
long-form web content. Font size is way too small (should be 16-18px, 14px
absolute minimum), column is too wide ("ideal" is 66 characters, though
there's a wide range). A good starter article:
<http://informationarchitects.net/blog/100e2r/> There are many, many more.

Until that page is completely redesigned and returned to a readable baseline,
it's difficult to discuss or test anything.

~~~
joshuarrrr
Agree completely with font size and column-width critiques, both of which are
addressed in an upcoming redesign. And, for that matter, I've always had issue
with Slate's UX and design choices.

>The fact is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise
here.

I agree that UX and design are often neglected when traditional publishers
work in digital mediums. But I find it odd that you can appreciate the
experience that leads to good UX and design but not the editorial and
reporting experience that leads to good copy.

~~~
0r3jq4a0j
_not the editorial and reporting experience that leads to good copy_

Writing, content strategy, curation, copywriting, etc are obviously all
important skills. However, being an editor does not remotely qualify someone
to run a multimillion dollar business, design software, dictate engineering
decisions, etc. Unfortunately, the industry is structured such that they are
doing exactly that.

Is it any surprise that slate's division is operating at a loss? It's the norm
in a broken industry.

~~~
bobwaycott
Not to be too off-topic, but with a slight modification:

> _However, being an [insert pre-digital mgr/executive]_ * _does not remotely
> qualify someone to run a multimillion dollar business, design software,
> dictate engineering decisions, etc. Unfortunately, the industry is
> structured such that they are doing exactly that._

This is everywhere, I think. I've experienced first-hand the same problems in
non-publishing industries where companies who rely on the web to do business
are staffed with people who hardly understand the web making technical and
software decisions, overriding software engineers and programmers making
suggestions that are in opposition to the random thoughts in their heads. This
is where the trump card of being higher up the ladder is played, and typically
with detrimental results of varying degrees.

It's a serious problem in any business when web & technology decisions are
still being made by people who don't understand the web & technology, and
can't build it themselves.

Outside of the software industry, most businesses I've run across think being
able to open a web browser or being in a mgmt/exec-level position qualifies
them to actually make good software decisions.

* By pre-digital I mean old businesses that have moved to the web for various things, but are staffed by people who don't build software making key software decisions [e.g., electrical engineers, marketing execs, etc. making decisions on platforms, languages, and implementations while ignoring the advice of actual developers].

------
bobsy
As soon as I hit a page with multiple pages I almost always lose interest and
immediately leave. I can read down a single page. However when I see an
article with 6 pages I am like ... ... sod that.

Its not so much the reading. Its the slow page loading which gets me down. If
people did pagination right with ajax preloading the next page then I would be
happy. 99% of sites do not do this. Instead their sites are slow because they
have to load a bunch of third party ad's. Moving from page to page when each
page takes 2-3 seconds to load kills the reading experience.

A Wired article featured on HN recently. I don't remember what it was about
but it had a gallery on it. You would think in today's day and age when you
click the thumbnail the main image would change. On this wired story no.. the
whole page reloaded. Due to third party ad's each page load took ages. The
page didn't bounce down to where the image should show. While I thought the
topic was interesting the user experience was so terrible I abandoned it.

If you are going to force pagination on readers then have a single page
option. Preferably at the top of the article. This way you cater for everyone.

~~~
noselasd
I always look for the "Print" button on such pages - as that shows the content
on a single page.

If there's no Print option, I'm not bothering reading the thing, unless it
contains info I absolutely need.

------
crazygringo
As an Internet user, I generally find pagination just as annoying as everyone
else here (and paginated slide shows deserve a special ring of hell just for
them).

BUT, from a web design perspective, there are actually some good reasons
behind text pagination, the main three being:

1) It helps you keep your place -- you can bookmark one of the 15 pages to
continue reading from later on, or forward to your friend ("check out the
third paragraph" instead of "84th paragraph"). Obviously, you'd never show a
100,000-word article on one page (except for printing). At some point,
pagination is necessary. Where to draw the line is obviously depends on a
multitude of factors.

2) Feeling like you're "in" the site, not in no-man's land. From a web design
perspective, you always want people to be able to navigate easily to other
parts of the site -- you want stuff in the sidebar, never be too far away from
header/footer, etc. You don't want people to be in a narrow column of text,
with total white on both sides and nothing else. (Obviously _users_ might
often prefer this, like I do, hence Instapaper etc., but other users also like
to be able to skip around to the rest of the site easily once they decide this
particular article isn't for them, etc.) Of course, "floating" sidebars,
headers, etc. can help alleviate this, but this requires the sidebars to be
very small, which is not always possible.

3) "Chunking" large pieces of content is just a good thing. A huge wall of
text is just no good from a usability or legibility standpoint. This, of
course, is why articles are broken down into sentences, paragraphs, sections,
parts, etc., so people "know where they are". Now I'll be the first to admit
that paging is a particularly inelegant sledgehammer way of chunking, but when
you're dealing with lots of articles of different lengths, formats, etc., it's
a kind of lowest-common-denominator that is seen as better than nothing.

I don't think the current way most sites handle pagination is really that
good, and it's a particularly bizarre combination to have pages that are
longer than the viewing area, so you have to scroll _and_ have to page. But
given the way browsers are put together, it's a solution that basically works,
given all the design constraints.

As a final note, I also think sites which _don't_ provide any single-page or
print option at all, _also_ deserve a special place in hell. :)

~~~
rabidsnail
> 1) It helps you keep your place -- you can bookmark one of the 15 pages to
> continue reading from later on, or forward to your friend ("check out the
> third paragraph" instead of "84th paragraph"). Obviously, you'd never show a
> 100,000-word article on one page (except for printing). At some point,
> pagination is necessary. Where to draw the line is obviously depends on a
> multitude of factors.

Put permalinks next to sections headings and/or change the fragment in the url
bar with javascript as the user scrolls. Links work, and no need for
pagination

>2) Feeling like you're "in" the site, not in no-man's land. From a web design
perspective, you always want people to be able to navigate easily to other
parts of the site -- you want stuff in the sidebar, never be too far away from
header/footer, etc. You don't want people to be in a narrow column of text,
with total white on both sides and nothing else. (Obviously users might often
prefer this, like I do, hence Instapaper etc., but other users also like to be
able to skip around to the rest of the site easily once they decide this
particular article isn't for them, etc.) Of course, "floating" sidebars,
headers, etc. can help alleviate this, but this requires the sidebars to be
very small, which is not always possible.

Use position: fixed (as you mention).Having submenus that expand on click
alleviates the space constraints. You can also swap out content in your header
or sidebar as the user scrolls (but please use tranitions, or you'll give
everyone eyestrain).

> 3) "Chunking" large pieces of content is just a good thing. A huge wall of
> text is just no good from a usability or legibility standpoint. This, of
> course, is why articles are broken down into sentences, paragraphs,
> sections, parts, etc., so people "know where they are". Now I'll be the
> first to admit that paging is a particularly inelegant sledgehammer way of
> chunking, but when you're dealing with lots of articles of different
> lengths, formats, etc., it's a kind of lowest-common-denominator that is
> seen as better than nothing

What's wrong with section headings?

~~~
crazygringo
I don't disagree with any of this, just that it's all a lot of work and isn't
always necessarily more desirable.

A lot of users don't understand section permalinks, fragments. Position: fixed
severely constrains your design possibilities, and swapping out content just
involves a lot more design and programming. And section headings are great,
but getting your CMS to implement a mini-table-of-contents at the top/bottom
of each page may involve a lot of programming too, and changing editorial
processes, etc.

That's why I called pagination a kind of lowest-common-denominator solution
that isn't great, but works. Clever programming can come up with better
solutions in many cases, but they can be a much bigger pain in the butt to
implement well, and there are often much more important priorities.

Taking existing websites and just getting rid of pagination isn't necessarily
always an improvement.

------
mfincham
Much bigger sin: Boing Boing style "endlessly load more content with
Javascript" nonsense.

If you're browsing on an (arguably flawed in its implementation) iOS device
where page state gets unexpectedly dumped all the time (e.g, tab switching,
browser crashes, "multitasking" switches out to an IM client), this style of
"pagination" is utterly pants. I end up having to manually edit the URL to
advance through content like Boing Boing and Tumblr just to be sure that when
Safari or Chrome inevitably next dump my page state I won't have to start from
the very top again.

~~~
machrider
Yeah, I can't stand infinite scroll pages. It becomes impossible to pass a
link to someone to a specific section of entries. It generally breaks the back
button -- when I click a link and then go back to an infinite scroll page, it
has dropped all the dynamic content and has to reload it, and then I have to
scroll back to where I was (which may have involved several minutes of
scrolling and loading content).

Perhaps it's irrational, but it also frustrates me that such pages have no
bottom. I think people got used to a model of a page where it has a top and a
bottom, and now it's a bit weird to interact with. One of my favorite examples
is Facebook's implementation, which leaves several useful navigation links in
the page footer. These links taunt you as you tried to scroll to reach them,
only to have more news content appear in your view and push the footer off
screen again. (I think they've since duplicated those footer links in other
locations so you can reach them, but it doesn't change the fact that this
broken UI model presents options and then sucks them away before you can click
on them.)

~~~
darkstalker
Infinite scroll pages are harder to read with a pointing device withouth a
scroll wheel, because the scroll bar jumps randomly when reaching the bottom.

------
sesqu
Since we're talking about pagination and article lengths, I'd like to take
this opportunity to voice my #1 annoyance with unpaginated (and some
paginated) articles: the comment section.

I'm perfectly able and quite willing to approximate my progress with reading
an article by observing the scroll bar. However, since the advent of social, I
find I can rarely trust that information, since the comment section adds an
additional multiple to the page length. I often find myself going on a pgdn
adventure to figure out the length of the article I've been reading for ten
minutes.

Would it really be so awful if the dozen pages of commentary were collapsed
behind a "show comments" or "show more comments" button? I want my progress
indicator back.

------
mcfunley
> Pagination is one of the worst design and usability sins on the Web, the
> kind of obvious...

It's not obvious. It depends on the situation. At Etsy, we experimented with
infinite scroll in search and pretty much every metric we cared about got
worse. But we do use it successfully in other contexts.

The thing that annoys me about this article is that it could mention A/B
results in some way, but it doesn't. He's just countering some editor's
opinion with his own.

------
tnuc
Article on single page.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/10/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/10/website_pagination_stories_should_load_into_a_single_page_every_time_.single.html)

~~~
ynniv
... but you'll miss the joke on page 2

~~~
bockris
Which reinforces his point for me. I didn't visit the 2nd page due to apathy.

------
TeMPOraL
tl; dr: I never realized people may have such different ways of using the
Internet.

I am surprised by the differences in opinions here; it's kind of like there
were two completely different worlds. For example, I have an exactly opposite
opinion to ps2000 [0] - single page long articles are the best and I never get
lost in them, because, well, every browser has a visual position indicator,
also known as "scroll bar". And I love infinite scrolling of Google Images;
I'd hate to have click "next page" several times.

Similarly, I completely disagree with mcpie [1] - for what I saw, it's the
"next page" button where people lose their interest. One-page articles have
one huge benefit: you can skim them before reading. For example, it takes me
about 15 seconds to skim an article and decide whether or not commit another
10 minutes for reading it. And for that sole reason, if I can't skim an
article because someone cut it into 10 pages, I usually decide it's not worth
reading.

Then there are A/B tests [2] [3] which completely blow my mind, because I feel
like I'm living in a completely different world, and there is this HUGE mass
of people out there, people of whom I saw or know no one, who actually click
on web ads, and love paginated articles, etc. and they are the majority, they
are the income source of the Internet, and I have never seen a single
representant of this huge group. So I'm confused. Are we really so different?

[0] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4606143>

[1] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4606388>

[2] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4606437>

[3] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4606081>

~~~
Zak
90% of people surveyed didn't know it's possible to search within a web page
using ctrl+f. Yes, we really are that different.

Cite:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-
of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/)

------
macchina
While I hate pagination, the mortal sin of click harvesting is the
"slideshow." Nothing gets my blood boiling like a Top 100 list embedded in a
clickthrough slideshow.

For regular articles, I use the Autopager extension for Firefox.

~~~
nlavezzo
+1 for Autopager. I love it.

------
Osiris
Pagination is particularly problematic on mobile devices where connections are
slow with high latency. It's much faster to load a single page than to force
users to click though to more pages.

There's a few websites I run into when looking at news on my phone that have a
pagination option plus a "Full article" button. I don't understand why it
doesn't just load the full article. Getting to the end of the page and having
to WAIT over 10 seconds to find out what the next paragraph says is
frustrating.

As others point out, I rarely click past the first page when I see pagination
because I hate waiting for the load files. I read a heck of a lot faster than
a browser can go fetch and render a new page. I'd rather take that time to
read than wait.

------
dools
Halfway through reading about usability sins a gigantic popup yelled at me to
install their iPad app.

~~~
prawks
Not _quite_ as bad as pagination, but probably #2 in annoyances.

------
zalew
hey, nobody beats Polish newspapers
<http://wyborcza.pl/1,75410,6071889,Teraz_go_zarymuje.html> check out the
pagination

~~~
anigbrowl
Good grief.

------
kmfrk
Pagination is perfectly fine, as long as it

1) isn't used to generate page views,

2) does not insult my capacity to read more than 50 words at a time
_(FOOORBES!)_ ,

3) is not used on a website that loads a lot of shit on each page

I don't use it too much, but unless the site provides anchor links to save
your progress like bookmarks, it's going to be a pan to save your progress.
Have fun reading that 15-page New Yorker article in one go.

Pagination sucks, when there isn't a need for it. Sometimes there is.

------
sethbannon
There goes Business Insider's business model.

------
louischatriot
I found this article interesting (it really resonates with me), although a bit
long. I made a tldr of it: <http://api.tldr.io/tldrs/506c34f3657e0ad75500014c>

------
pknight
I'm just as fervent against pagination for the sake of page views and ads, but
am I the only one that gets tired from endless scrolling? For long reads I'd
rather click to the next page (provided it's preloaded with ajax).

------
SjuulJanssen
Autopatchwork rocks!
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autopatchwork/aeol...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/autopatchwork/aeolcjbaammbkgaiagooljfdepnjmkfd)

~~~
mushishi
I wish it worked. I actually browsed through Postgresql documentation last
night, and thought this kind of a thing would be useful as it is paginated
into a lot of subsections.

But the plugin didn't seem to have any effect.

edit: Within minutes it has shown to be useful on other sites. Thanks for the
suggestion.

~~~
SjuulJanssen
It depends on whether the page uses rel="next"

------
ps2000
Only one thing sucks more than pagination: a very long article, you
accidentally scroll and forget which section you are reading.

Pagination is better than no navigation, this is why Google Image Search is
weird to navigate. The absence of proper pagination may be even the reason
Google Wave has found no friends beyond its believers.

Pagination sucks when text length per page is too short and even more when 50%
of the content consists of advertisements. I avoid such websites.

~~~
tripzilch
> Only one thing sucks more than pagination: a very long article, you
> accidentally scroll and forget which section you are reading.

That's why some people tend to select and highlight random bits of text while
reading. It's not always because they're just fidgety :)

------
driverdan
Splitting content based on chapter, category, or topic makes sense. Splitting
it based on a fixed length "page" is antiquated, and not just on the web.
Ebooks and ebook readers that force explicit page lengths and page "turning"
are equally as annoying. Content flows much better through scrolling instead
of having hard fixed length breaks.

------
DanBC
Yet again I need to say that I'd happily pay a reasonable amount to avoid ads
and get a better layout.

"Free" isn't really free when I'm paying for a bunch of stuff to be downloaded
that I neither want nor need. And putting myself at risk from unscrupulous or
incompetent ad networks.

------
pre
What I don't really understand is how pagination gives more ad impressions in
a way that simply adding more adverts into the text in a long page doesn't.

If the goal is more ads, why not just put more ads on longer pages?

~~~
gizzlon
Maybe they pay to have their add on the top of the page? So adds further down
would pay less?? Just guessing here..

~~~
pre
I think that's probably true as it goes, even though adverts above the text
are more easily ignored than adverts within the text. Funny old world.

------
donkeylipstick
Safari will automatically merge all pages into a single page, strip out the
ads, and reformat the article using nice legible typography.

Is this fair to the publishers? No. But I'm glad a browser came up with a
solution.

------
prawks
If a paginated article I visit doesn't have a "View All" button I typically
leave. Very rarely are paginated articles so intensely interesting that I
suffer through a slideshow.

------
dcolish
Good thing this article was paginated. I didn't really bother reading it once
I saw that. Hypocritical journalism isn't worth reading.

~~~
wingerlang
The second page consists of only this:

> P.S. Of course I didn’t divorce my wife just because she likes multipage
> articles. I divorced her because she types two spaces after a period. (Not
> really.)

Don't know what's that about though..

------
zio99
Ironic that they split the article into 2 pages, and readibility only gets the
abstract, so ads got in the way as well.

------
mey
Did anyone else's system grind to an utter halt from ad's on that page? (Irony
is not lost)

------
pinchyfingers
No, they should continue paginating because most readers will just click to
the second page and Slate will increase their ad impressions. I'm sure that
Slate has tested this and found it to be true. If there was something
different they could do to increase ad views, they'd be doing that instead.

~~~
pinchyfingers
How is this down voted? Is it not a valid comment that could lead to a
meaningful discussion? Stop being tree-hugging Communists, bros.

------
itsbits
Pagination is an issue only when it comes to touch devices..

------
hansy
What about pagination with comments?

------
electic
I can't read this article. It has two pages and the title on the first page
said there should be only one page for all pages on the web.

------
di
But of course, even this article itself is paginated.

Perhaps ironically, but still.

~~~
krogsgard
If you read even a little bit of the article, you'll see it's Slate's policy
to do so. But even then, if you click the next page, he just completes the
joke he made in the article.

~~~
fletchowns
Poor guy couldn't even get through the first sentence before he felt the urge
to try to impress us all with his keen observation.

