Twitter.com finally removes their awful pagination

March 19th, 2009 · Comments · Twitter

Twitter.com’s Newer and Older buttons at the bottom of the tweet stream are NO MORE!

Just this morning when I refreshed the page, I noticed that they’ve been replaced by the lovely more button:

When you press more, another 20 tweets appear right there on the page.

Much easier to use — scrolling is not bad! That’s a long-dead usability misconception.

Dopplr has been doing this for ages on all of their lists of people. This is the list of people I might know, with a “suggest more people” link at the bottom:

And when I click the link…

20 more people are displayed in place. What I like about Dopplr’s implementation over Twitter’s is the double-line that shows a break between batches of people. It isn’t functional (you can’t roll back to that place), but it does help the eye when scanning a long page and helps you keep your place.

Interestingly, the old page # Twitter URLs still work (for example, this one), but lead you to a page that starts with an old tweet and ends with the More button, with no way to find later tweets. This needs to be rethought a bit. Perhaps a More button at the top that pushes the stream down?

What do you guys think of the new More button? Let me know in the comments.

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Tags: Design·Pleasure·Twitter

Ninad Raval

I had a discussion about this style of pagination with a friend at work, here are some thought..

* "more" does not allow a user to jump to a conversation say two weeks back, he has no context and will have to keep clicking more untill he gets there...

* once i get to this, say on the 4rd instance, how to i scroll right back at the top? (there should be a top link maybe)

* now that i'm seeing so many posts how do I see fewer, in FB atlease, there is no way to see fewer posts, that happens onky if the user refreshes the page. (i cant think of a good reason why i would want to see fewer posts, but its just a state i want to return to..)

About auto scrolling.
I think this is a bad idea, it does not give users any context of how much information is loaded, seems like a bottomless pit.
for e.g.
* in google search results, there is a significance of begin on the first page. i know i will find what i want on the first page

* in my RSS, or in FB for that matter, users typically only scan the first page, it gives them a feeling of "fresh/new content"

As always, i think context of use is very important in choosing what kind of pagination should be used. Maybe in twitter its ok to do away with the numbered pagination because users usually scan only the latest updates and a little more.

bobby

I don't know why they didn't do it sooner. I absolutely agree with you that the "More" button makes things that much easier. (Even for me who really doesn't tweet all that much).

prepbooks

I am much like you on this bobby!

Lucy Z

I do not like More button. Accidently clicking some link - @who, (usually in the same window), I have to click more button 20 times to get back to where I viewed. It is good that twitter keeps the old view in URL.

Marla Erwin

Agreed- the more button is pretty design but awful usability. At least before I could remember I was on page 4 and get back pretty easily.

Colin N.

I second this point. If they figured out how to maintain state, it would make it much more useful. I'm not a UX expert, but clicking the back button and not going back to the same place has GOT to be a faux pas.

MLDina

I actually prefer the old school buttons. It was easier to keep track of your spot in the updates, though I can understand why some would prefer the more button. Next step- customizing Twitter, pick your buttons!

Matt Robin

Yeah, I like it! [The new 'More' button].

I've read some negative comments about it over the past few days...some people thinking it's a bit plain or not sophisticated enough (!), but I'm finding it much easier to use than the previous method...which was a chore!

rubken

Soup.io has a nice endless navigation option where more content loads automatically as the user approaches the bottom of the scrollbar. Unfortunately without JS enabled they revert to very basic pagination. So right at one level but degradation is important too particularly with the rise of mobile browsing.

Keith Instone

Aza Raskin talked about this - sorta - at IxDA 08 - http://interaction08.ixda.org/Aza_Raskin.php - and elsewhere - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuELwq2ThJE - but he goes farther - why does the user even need to say "more"? When the user gets to the bottom of the page, what if more items we already there, waiting for them?

So I'd say removing "paging" is probably a step in the right direction (because people probably think of tweets as a constant stream, not as chunks of items randomly divided up based upon some page size choice).

Can't wait until Twitter gets to the next level and removes the "more" button.

Brad Nunnally

I was half way typing a comment that said everything Keith says here, then I made the smart decision and looked up :D.

So ditto.

Darius

Indeed, like you mentioned with the direct page links, if I disable Javascript I have no way to move back to newer tweets.
I think they should put back the pagination and only enable the 'More' button with JS.
Also, they could disable the direct page links and just send you straight to the person's home.

Tony

I agree wholeheartedly. Aside from general friendliness, this is a much more appropriate behaviour suggestion for Twitter—stops users perceiving it so often as pages they must wade through and catch up on, encourages thinking of Twitter as a constant flow for dipping in and out of.