as a developer or a user, would you prefer if a page in an application (desktop, mobile, web) is presented as a list of numbered pages(as in the case of google search) or as a very long page with all the requested items (as in the case of twitter)??

i prefer scroll. simply because it allows me to have a glimpse of everything.

I would like to know of people's view on this.

what method you prefer and why?

pagination anyday...especially when searching why? its easier and saves time

₱®ÌИСΞ:
pagination anyday...especially when searching why? its easier and saves time

so, if your mobile phone's music player uses pages, you will like it?

player uses pages to do what? display titles or results for lyric search or smfn?
left to me id prefer to see the position i am relative to everything(pages left), to know or set how much content is contained in a page etc

scrolling gets boring after a while, almost impossible to know or quickly navigate to the page / section i got the result another time...suitable for realtime data or almost infinite results....and no way navigating based on any form of order....and @ a time there is the memory issue

pagination all the way, here on nairaland, i can jump to the last post and contribute to the current yarn or go to page 1 to figure out the actual bone of contention
with twitter like pagination on a site like nairaland, i'll be force to stick with whats current or read through all the crap if i ever need to get to page 1
sucks!

webdezzi: pagination all the way, here on nairaland, i can jump to the last post and contribute to the current yarn or go to page 1 to figure out the actual bone of contention
with twitter like pagination on a site like nairaland, i'll be force to stick with whats current or read through all the crap if i ever need to get to page 1
sucks!

with pagination, you have to cache the pages somehow in order to know the number of pages(am I right?) but with scroll, the items get loaded on demand. I think that's efficient.

lordZOUGA:
with pagination, you have to cache the pages somehow in order to know the number of pages(am I right?) but with scroll, the items get loaded on demand. i think that's efficient.

No. I think you are a bit lazy ...

Javanian:

No. I think you are a bit lazy ...

that's not an argument

lordZOUGA:
that's not an argument

Certainly not, just an instinct...

I think you know which is better but you are tempted to take the easy route...

Javanian:

Certainly not, just an instinct...

I think you know which is better but you are tempted to take the easy route...

infinite scroll?

Pagination is better...

I love pagination but use infinite scroll, its lazy and ok

lordZOUGA:
with pagination, you have to cache the pages somehow in order to know the number of pages(am I right?) but with scroll, the items get loaded on demand. I think that's efficient.

No you are wrong.

with pagination,
you only have to do this simple maths.

SELECT count(id) FROM table

so lets say count() returned 100
and per page, i intend to display 5 and paginate the rest, cool

use something like this

$rate=5;
$totalNumPages=100/$rate;
so i know we gonna have 20 pages, use a for() loop to build ur pagination

for ($w=1;$w<=$totalNumPages;$w++){

     echo "<a href='page.php?next=".(($w*$rate)+1)."'>("+$w+" )</a>&nbsp;";

}

so on the server, the sql for next page will look like
SELECT * FROM table LIMIT $_GET['next'], $rate

thats all, very efficient.

webdezzi:

No you are wrong.

with pagination,
you only have to do this simple maths.

SELECT count(id) FROM table

so lets say count() returned 100
and per page, i intend to display 5 and paginate the rest, cool

use something like this

so on the server, the sql for next page will look like
SELECT * FROM table LIMIT $_GET['next'], $rate

thats all, very efficient.

oh... but for scroll, I just get data and append.

i like pagination but i also like infine scroll so i think the best is pagination by default with the option of infinite scroll

I would choose infinite scroll (Ajax enabled) over pagination.

I like both ideas so i fuse them using jquery(pc only for now,mobile later#touchscreen's only)..my page displays a list of pages and onclick the clicked page shows up immediately and you can hide it to display other pages..but only glitch here is that it will be loaded along with page again on mobile..

Fayimora: I definitely prefer to scroll. However, you must remember my last position(to the nearest pixel) when I use the back button..

back button in scroll? :/

Pagination is obviously better:
1) With pagination, you can bookmark the position you're at and then go straight to it later. That's awesome.
2) With infinite scroll, you can't view the millionth element on a list without loading the 1st 999,999 into your browser. That's awful.

Seun: Pagination is obviously better:
1) With pagination, you can bookmark the position you're at and then go straight to it later. That's awesome.

scroll can do this same thing..

personally, I believe that google search can be implemented with scroll. paging the results is not exactly useful considering that users do not know what the search results might contain and so cannot know which page to jump to.

I hate infinite scrolls, i might want to look at the last item, and it just populates the list again, but a "load more" control is far better then again that is as good as pagination.

omo_to_dun:

Can you give us an example of such a site where the current comment can be bookmarked or instantly navigated to?

I seriously loathe the infinite scroll system.

I was talking about the in-page navigation system. it's mostly used on documentation pages. check out the on-line sqlite documentation page for what I mean. I think the whole documentation exists on one page.