No paging = happier users
What I mean by paging is the separation of content on more than 1 page after it exceeds a specific amount, as in Google search for example search for anything to find for example 1000 results actually they are over 1000000000 but to simplify our calculations let's say 1000, those results will be separated on 100 pages 10 results per page arranged from the most relevant to the least.
It's also used in other types of content for example in del.icio.us for bookmarks, Wired News for separating long stories also maybe it's made to show more ads during a story & flickr for separating photos.
What I've been thinking about for a while and wanted to discuss with you is weather or not paging is the best experience for a user, and if not what other possibilities could be applied.
less mouse clicks + less waiting time + less finding a link time & effort ( I mean the next link or the numbers ) = better user experience so I got another possibility that has none of the above the other possibility simply is not using paging and just leave all the content as it is in one page, some body just asked what are you crazy what if I got 1000000000 items like the search results of anything, yes but remember that those items will load from up to down that means that the showed part of the page which is the most upper part will be filled first immediately then the scroll bar will begin to get smaller indicating that the web page is vertically getting longer, if you are going to examine the items one by one I'm sure your examination time to every item will be a lot less than it's loading time even if you just roll your eyes on them.
Another one just asked "But now I will have to read the page before it's completely loaded" and why not what prevent you of reading a page while it's still loading in fact most of the users do that and maybe even click on a link before the page is fully loaded, another question "But it might download unnecessary content if I left the web page opened" the most probability is that the user will click on a link or just enter in a new URL or close the browser, but if he didn't and leave it opened yes sure that might be a problem because it will affect the net speed that might be needed in other browsers windows or any open downloads and if the net is used by a network of computers not only single PC it will decrease the net speed of the whole network it will not really affect if the content is text but if it's a list of photos like in flickr it will definitely affect, and this is not a problem for the user only it's a bigger problem for the page owner as it will cost him a lot of extra unnecessary bandwidth.
So what to do now ? I suggest adding the option No paging beside the options that we often see Show 10, 25, 50, 100 in a page let it be show 10, 25, 50, 100, all in a page, let the option all be the default if the content is text and let the option be 25 or 50 if the content is images according to the size of images if they are high resolution let it be 25 or 10 if low let it be 50 etc...
If you choose not to page you just have to take care not to put the side bar and the navigation etc... below the main content in the Markup the main content have to be the last thing because if you put the side bar and navigation etc... after the content they will not load until all the content is loaded.
Here is a 1MB HTML file that contains this post 245 times, to imagine how easy life will be without paging.
August 15, 2006, 12:40 AM | User experience
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:http://www.point-studios.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/boudym/managed-mt/mt-tb.cgi/63
Comments
1 | August 15, 2006 11:38 AM, Green Data said:
I am totally with you about minimizing the mouse clicks, and pages transfers. But loading everything at once, when it comes to pages that have images and other multimedia stuff. The http protocol opens a seperate session for each of these multimedia content. So pages in this case will not be downloaded in a top-down sequence. Which wil make the dancing effect you see when reading a paragraph, then an image on top of it is loaded causing it to go down.
Also loading a whole page at once may not overload the client, as you said, you can simply get out of of the page before it is fully loaded, however I dunno what effect it will have on the server, the server in such case is forced to send the whole page, unless the clients send him a tcp-reset, and i am not sure if this is the case here. may be the lack of tcp-acks will make the server stop, but still a big tcp window size may make the server send loads of data that were not supposed to be sent, which will affect the server's performace in a way or another.
2 | August 15, 2006 12:41 PM, Abdelrahman Osama said:
Thanks for your comment Green Data, About the dancing effect it's only caused from the lack of width & height attributes in the img tag which breaks the validation of any (X)HTML page, notice the images on this page clear the cache and refresh the page you will see that the image box will take it's space and the alt text will be shown in it before the image is loaded. And about what pressure the server will suffer it's up to the owner if he could pay more for the sake of satisfying the user it will be better if he can't afford it he could at least increase the amount of content shown in one page as possible as he can. And about the multimedia in a page a multimedia object will not start loading unless the content is loaded till it reach it. Actually I think No paging is the standard way but I unfortunately I didn't find any mention of that on the W3C.