VileRancour wrote:

...if you don't see how that's the mother of all smug derisions, your reading must be rather selective.

Your post was just the nearest example. I was speaking generally.

VileRancour wrote:

When someone dishes this out, a response in kind should be expected.

An eye for an eye? I would hope not.

VileRancour wrote:

In fact, only one person here has placed any kind of value on something *purely* because of its position on the timeline, and that's the one guy who seems to like this particular trend; so I don't know where you're pulling these strawmen from.

It was a general forum-wide observation, which I just happened to post in this thread because it's active and somewhat relevant.

VileRancour wrote:

I could list a whole host of points explaining why this usage of infinite scroll is inherently bad (with slightly better reasoning than a non-elaborated "it has its place", or "get with the program bro, everyone's doing it"). I have done so elsewhere. Others have done so here. But it doesn't matter, because people here insist on talking past each other, so I'd only be preaching to the converted.

Like "Honestly, who ever thought infinite scroll is a good idea must be brain dead"? Nice and pragmatic! 😜

Many of the reasons given stem from a desire to continue navigating the web in one's own highly-habituated way, owing to preference, and even muscle memory. And let me be perfectly clear: I get that. And I sympathise. Honestly!!! But my habits aren't the same as those of my next-door neighbour, and I can't honestly expect anybody to cater to me as an individual.

Some of the faults aren't even specific to infinite scroll, but rather to a lack of forethought on the part of the designer, and could just as easily cause headaches with page-flipping layouts. For example, you could easily link to a specific section of an infinite-scrolling page if the author provides anchors, or "direct links" that only load the article/item in question. The back/forward buttons will work fine as long as the appropriate JS is used to manipulate content.

The argument for supporting old browsers/systems just isn't reasonable. Nobody in their right mind is going to spend time and effort making sure their UX is the same on browsers that represent an infinitesimally small percentage of traffic.

Obviously VogonsDrivers has a very targeted audience, and I did do my best to make sure it would be at least usable on old browsers (hence *shudder* tables for layout!). It's an edge case, and there clearly IS a practical argument for having it work on old browsers. The same can't be said for 99.99999% of sites on the web.

VileRancour wrote:

...if you don't see how that's the mother of all smug derisions...

My comment was meant to be light hearted but I clearly misjudged the room, so my appologies. I'll leave you to rage against the machine in peace.

Some of the faults aren't even specific to infinite scroll, but rather to a lack of forethought on the part of the designer, and could just as easily cause headaches with page-flipping layouts. For example, you could easily link to a specific section of an infinite-scrolling page if the author provides anchors, or "direct links" that only load the article/item in question. The back/forward buttons will work fine as long as the appropriate JS is used to manipulate content.

That's just a hack to try to fix up the normal working of the web. The web is based on pages and anything else breaks it.

Pagination is important for several reasons. Bookmarking and linking that works and not in a hacky way. It also provides a good stopping point for the reader
while with infinite scroll, you don't have a clean breaking point. Maybe that's what the designers want - but it still isn't good for the consumer.

smeezekitty wrote:

That's just a hack to try to fix up the normal working of the web. The web is based on pages and anything else breaks it.

Explain how providing a perma-link to a specific article or post is a "hack" compared to linking to an aggregate view (or an HTML #anchor within an aggregate view).

infinite scrolls itself aren't new, i've seen it being used on older yahoo news comment sections, which i viewed using IE 6, years ago.
I dislike infinite scrolls, as more content loaded the page performance became more and more slower especially if you decided to scolls into opposite direction.