[chillfox]

Infinite scroll is bad UX design and always has been.

It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer.

I remember when it was initially introduced, everyone I spoke to about it hated it.

[sureMan6]

Also creates a confusion that algorithm profiteers love, where before you could know a post you saw would be page 1 today and page 2 tomorrow now the homepage of every app is absolute chaos so you have to spend hours searching for something specific or you're just always seeing exactly what they want you to see (to increase engagement or whatever instead of any sensible order)

[layman51]

I have always hated infinite scroll because it becomes way more difficult to understand the index of a search result or piece of content. For example, if I know that each page of results contains 25 hits, then it is easy for me to see which one is the 25th hit, and then which one is the 26th one (first one on the next page).

I don't mind that the order of search results might be shifted around over time, and I understand that there is some profit motive to inserting tangentially relevant or sponsored hits, but I really wish that there were an easy way of knowing what index each result has.

This grew out of a funny little habit I sometimes have where I like to pick a random number and see what search hit that corresponds to. It becomes too tedious with infinite scroll.

[nijave]

position: fixed has been around a long time

A lot of implementations also break the back button and "page" or scroll position links (you can link to a singular item but not a spot in the list)

They usually also break psuedo binary search and force linear/sequential search (you can't skip a head to page 10 when you're trying to zero in on a date unless they've added an explicit date filter and you remember the exact date versus the relative position)

Also breaks parallel loading--can't queue up the next few pages of gigantic media in new tabs while finishing the current page

They also tend to break ctrl-f and if they don't they tend to get progressively slower as more crap stays loaded in memory

[AstroJetson]

You must have spoken to me, I hate it today has as much as I did back then.

[pfg_]

Steam fixes this by having a footer, and putting more content under the footer. Google search also did this on mobile for a little while.

[acchow]

> It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page

That's a UI bug. Real infinite scroll does not have a footer.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer.

But you can see the links! Maybe if your reflexes were just a little faster, if the mouse didn't lag!!!

[kentm]

Yeah I hate infinite scroll. I have no idea what actual common sentiment is because you’d have to do broad polling to find that out. I always wonder if UI designers fall into the “everyone i talked loved it” where everyone consists of “other designers and developers who have a stake in making this a common feature” or “user surveys that are heavily loaded to arrive at the conclusion I want “

Could be I’m just an old man yelling at clouds though.

[watwut]

I am pretty sure of that. Mostly because they always do the same impractical thing at the same time. And they discover it is bad few years later, also all at exactly the same time.

[burningChrome]

Its also horrendous for accessibility and screen reader users.