Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A long-held gripe of mine, one I've always wanted an answer to (and even better, a fix for, although that's usually not the case).
With website articles, how come if you're viewing (say) an article that is about the "10 Best Cars of the Past 10 Years" or such, rather than having 1 nice long page with the entire article, they ALWAYS have to do it to where it shows 1 at the time and you have to click "next" for each one? That bugs me. I really prefer to load the entire thing all at once and then take it from there.
The same thing happens if you, say, are viewing comments posted to an article, if there are (say) 123 comments, they will only show 10 per page & you have to click "next, next, next" to read them all. Seldom is a "view all" option provided. (One exception: it is when you read YouTube comments, and I really appreciate that.)
Why is that? I don't mind them breaking into "page 1, 2, 3" or "previous, next" etc if "show all" is also offered as on option, but when you HAVE to do the "next, next, next" route, it about drives me crazy.
Yes, it's a design aspect I can't stand. Of any Internet aggravation, it may rank #1 among all of them. In fact, I so hate it that I make an exception here in terms of that I typically vote for no laws regarding the Internet, that it should be totally the "wild wild west" no government accountability whatsoever.
Here, though, if it were me, it would be REQUIRED BY LAW that such articles MUST have the option for "all on 1 page" viewing, I don't care if it's 30 pages long and/or has 30,231 comments. I am interested in the article, I DON'T CARE that ads pay for it, I don't care that such a design increases search engine clicks, I am interested in making things as easy as possible, to me convenience is GOD. And no, I shouldn't have to host the site to achieve this, THEY should do it. (I always hate it when people say "if you hate so & so, then YOU build one." That would be like saying 30-odd years ago "if you hate cars with an exploding gas tank [Ford Pinto] then YOU build one yourself." The average person can't build their own car, & those who do ought to do it RIGHT. Same here.)
There are exceptions, thank goodness. YouTube comments are all on 1 page even if there are 35,000 of them. I've seen photo-hosting sites that offer to show all the thumbnails on 1 long page as an option.
I mean, really, can you imagine if your boss had you do a spreadsheet showing 40-90 lines of data, and you split it up 10 lines at the time and gave him 9-odd pages when it could all fit on 1-2 pages easily? To me this is no less ridiculous and stupid.
I hate this as much as the next guy, but it's simply an inconvenience ... not a life changer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by larrytxeast
Here, though, if it were me, it would be REQUIRED BY LAW that such articles MUST have the option for "all on 1 page" viewing
And then what? Another strategy is used for ads and then a new law? And then another new law?
Quote:
Originally Posted by larrytxeast
I am interested in the article, I DON'T CARE that ads pay for it, I don't care that such a design increases search engine clicks, I am interested in making things as easy as possible, to me convenience is GOD.
It quite honestly doesn't matter if you care. That doesn't change the forces at play. Either you pay for a product or you are the product.
Quote:
Originally Posted by larrytxeast
And no, I shouldn't have to host the site to achieve this, THEY should do it. (I always hate it when people say "if you hate so & so, then YOU build one." That would be like saying 30-odd years ago "if you hate cars with an exploding gas tank [Ford Pinto] then YOU build one yourself." The average person can't build their own car, & those who do ought to do it RIGHT. Same here.)
You're equating the safety factor of a potentially exploding car with the inconvenience of an ad or clicks?
Quote:
Originally Posted by larrytxeast
There are exceptions, thank goodness. YouTube comments are all on 1 page even if there are 35,000 of them. I've seen photo-hosting sites that offer to show all the thumbnails on 1 long page as an option.
Actually, very many of these types of presentations have a "View on one page" link just below first or use infinite scroll depending on what's being presented.
Quote:
Originally Posted by larrytxeast
I mean, really, can you imagine if your boss had you do a spreadsheet showing 40-90 lines of data, and you split it up 10 lines at the time and gave him 9-odd pages when it could all fit on 1-2 pages easily? To me this is no less ridiculous and stupid.
Can you imagine if your boss told you that you get paid based on the number of pages you create?
Like I said, I don't like the inconvenience any more than the next guy ... but I don't think it's as life affecting as the post above illustrates.
Here, though, if it were me, it would be REQUIRED BY LAW that such articles MUST have the option for "all on 1 page" viewing, I don't care if it's 30 pages long and/or has 30,231 comments.
You want to dictate how many resources that I'm paying for to allocate for a single page request ? I don't think you understand the technical aspects of what you are asking for. Web developers specifically try and make their applications fast and one of the ways they do that is by avoiding very long queries which is what you are asking for. Firstly that is going to greatly slow down your page browsing becsue A)a request like that takes a huge amount of time to execute not to mention the additional bandwidth and B)it's compounded by everyone else making the same request.
Honestly Larry it would not help, as far as youtube goes they are using AJAX which dynamically loads the content on the same page. You'll see more of that in the future.
(sgorneau) I understand what you're saying, let me address it a bit just the same.
"Simply an inconvenience," as you saw me say, to me convenience is GOD. It is EVERYTHING. It is equally important even compared to safety or security in many cases, or darn near it, as well as money etc. It is HUGE with me.
A big reason I react this way, besides my priorities being what they are--it's because there are, in my observation, a LOT of aspects in life where convenience has been shoved aside, sometimes at pretty large costs, just to gain a very tiny amount of safety or security (in this case, it's ad revenue).
Schools going overboard with safety, such as the crazy things you have to go through sometimes just to pick your kids up, because they MIGHT be abducted. (What's wrong with doing like we did & having the kids wait under an "awning" & when they see their ride they just take on off? Someone can be out there watching, that's fine.)
Jobs banning cell phones because someone MIGHT be committing industrial espionage.
The airport delays because of September 11th--yes some changes I could understand, but they take it too far.
Newer cars having the "chipped" keys that cost a TON of money (in this case, the convenience is the difficulty in having a key duplicated, of course the huge cost is also a pain).
Newer cars also tend to have the seat belt anchors lodged WAY deep in the seat cushions making them much harder to buckle, apparently it's just that tiny bit safer.
Child safety seats--the salespeople ALWAYS nag you to get the "3 point harness" that is just a wee bit safer but MUCH harder to actually buckle & unbuckle. When I told them my #1 priority was the one that was the easiest to buckle & unbuckle, figuring that even the worst of them were still very safe (what with all the government regulations etc) & knowing that going through all of that several times everyday would get on my last nerve, you should've seen their face, it was like I was saying I was a fan of the late David Koresh & wanted to find a cult just like that one used to be.
The newer gasoline cans that are impossible to use, oh but they're SAFER.
Software & sites that require you to change your passwords every 30 days & have very draconian rules for what your passwords can be. I haven't changed my eBay password in 11-odd years and have no desire to--if it gets hacked, so be it, but quit nagging me.
(An old one) the lawnmowers requiring you to hold down the handle while you're using them & every time you let go to remove an obstruction you have to re-crank it (no wonder every lawnmower I've ever purchased second-hand has been "redneck rigged" to override this, and good for them I say)
People thought I was lazy because when my kids were toddlers I told them I didn't want overalls as clothes (in regards to gifts) because I didn't care how cute it made the kids looked, they were aggravating to deal with when it came time to change their diapers.
DVDs that lock you out from fast-winding past the FBI warnings & sometimes even 3-odd minutes worth of previews, because apparently they want to MAKE you watch those things EVERY SINGLE TIME you load the disc. Frankly, I copy the discs & then re-author them with just the feature selection, so when it loads, it starts playing the movie itself IMMEDIATELY, I don't even have to press play or okay etc. Again, CONVENIENCE.
"Captcha," need I say more?
My point is that any single one of these all by themselves, it's not a big deal, but when you add them all together, you come away with the annoying impression that convenience isn't taken seriously enough, and that you're supposed to be so single-minded about safety and security etc that even if you make the task, let's say, 359% less convenient & only gain 0.03% more safety, then if you then reject the change you're a shallow, lazy, "they're stuck in the Mayberry era" type of ignoramus that doesn't think safety matters at all. If the task is, say, only 3% less convenient but it's like 35% safer, then that's fine, but reverse it--that's NOT fine.
Basically, again, convenience isn't enough of a priority, and if you're like me and convenience is HUGE, then with all of that going on there is a "backlash" of sorts & you go to the other end & basically say that convenience is GOD, it is EVERYTHING.
So yes, add to the thing of having to click "next" 8023 times because they're being ad-revenue whores, and yes I'm going to protest AND have the nerve to say that even though I'm not paying for it my opinion STILL matters. After all, without readers, who's going to read the ads?
(thecoalman) Not to be insulting, but I'm calling bull on that. Gee whiz, all we're talking about is TEXT. Given how much faster computers are and how large storage is, long blocks of text are NOTHING. If a computer has that much problem with something that simple, it's a junky computer & needs to be thrown on the scrap heap, frankly. We're not talking about a 1 Gigabyte video clip here. I once typed up a Microsoft Word document that was 150 pages in size and it was barely a 400 KILOBYTE file, even with the formatting code saved (it wasn't "plain" text), and my clunky 133 MHz computer running Office 2000 EASILY handled that like it was nothing. Don't tell me a 2013 machine with quad-core processors & such can't handle more than 2-3 paragraphs at the time, I'm not buying it. YouTube, by the way, if you click "show all" comments, I don't care if there are 30,000 of them, it loads ALL of them, and QUICKLY. It's no big deal. PBase is a photo site that lets you "view all" of the thumbnails even if there are 400 of them on the page, only the speed of your connection can trip it up, otherwise "BAM!" it's THERE.
My apologies for the long rant, I know it's easy to read this and think "wow, this guy--nuts" etc. It's not like that really, it's just that--like I said, when you have so many such things, you get to where you can't take ANY such things at ALL, it's the straw the broke the camel's back kind of thing.
(thecoalman) Not to be insulting, but I'm calling bull on that. Gee whiz, all we're talking about is TEXT.
Larry I really didn't address the bandwidth but take your 400 kilobyte file and times that by X amount of requests per minute, you're not the only one using that site. The bandwidth is only part of the issue and depending on the site may not be an issue at all, it's the processing time that is the larger issue and the more resources you add to fill a request has a compounding affect. When you load a page on nearly any site it's not simply sending a text file, it's executed with a whole bunch of stuff going on behind the scenes like database queries etc.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
