Can I disable the merging of pages?

I'm not sure if this was a recent change, or something I haven't noticed for awhile, but I'm not liking how the pages keep merging into one as you scroll down.

What tends to happen is that I'll read several pages of posts, and then I'll want to go back to someone's post to re-read or quote, but I'm stuck in this mega page, which requires a lot of searching.

I also have a fast-spinning middle wheel that I tend to use constantly. I'll give it a quick flick to scroll down fast, and then I accidentally scroll through 4 or 5 pages, which requires me to hunt back to the place where I left off.

I'm not sure when this changed, but I'm struggling with it a bit. I guess I was just so used to the old way of clicking through short pages (I liked the feeling of progress with the short pages too).

I just noticed this today, and I kind of like it. It saves me the extra click(s) from going from page to page. I like the dramatic fade/display of extra posts when I reach the bottom too (me = dweeb)! I don't post as much as you do though, so I can see your point.

There is no way to disable it, and I definitely don't want to go back. I understand the issue, but it's also kind of an edge case in terms of usability. Decrease your scroll sensitivity! :)

You could add a marker or push pin feature, and have a button at the bottom of the page that automatically scrolls to the marker or push pin.

I have no use for anything like that though. I like the way the rest of the page automatically loads though. I wish other pages had that feature, especially the amusement park photo trip reports I like to visit sometimes. I like to just relax and read instead of clicking every few minutes.

And I like the dramatic way it loads too. It's fun.

This feature seems like it was made for the Magic Mouse/Touchpad. :) I love it.

Honestly, it's just what Facebook has done for years now. From an academic standpoint, however, it's interesting because Web-based forums have usability as a concern, but also discoverability for search engines, which is why the page links are still there, even though you probably will never use them again. I don't like that, and it feels messy, but I haven't figured out how to approach it yet.

I'm sure it's something I'll get used to. Just give me a couple months, and then I'll complain if you change it back. ;)

I like the change. I guess I can see how it would make going back to look for a previous post a little bit harder, but it's not like I can ever remember what page number any given post was on anyway.

I wish there was an obvious way to train people to link to specific posts by using the URL of the "link" link. To get it, you right-click and "copy URL" or something similar, depending on the browser. That way, even if three or four posts were deleted, it will always find the right page for, and scroll to, that post.

I am not sure how it works, as I thought the mobile view was little more than a CSS swap, but I seem to be getting traditional pagination on my iPad.

(I say 'seem to' because I so infrequently join a thread not already on the last page, so I might just not have seen it here yet...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The mobile views are in fact entirely different markup.

(User watches the switch more closely)

AAaaah. I see. It is a code swap, but at a higher level than I was thinking. Mobile view generates a different page. See, it happens so fast I didn't realize the page had to be regenerated.

The point remains, though...the mobile view does not seem to get the mega-page. So that might be a way to get pagination back...for a while.

Yes, the mobile view is not wired to keep a connection open to the server or do autoloading magic, because that's suboptimal when you have to pay for bandwidth by the megabyte.

There is no "code" difference with the mobile views. Because it runs on a model-view-controller framework, the same code executes to generate the same model for either view. The view is little more than dumb markup.

Jeff said:

I wish there was an obvious way to train people to link to specific posts by using the URL of the "link" link.

I don't know how elegant this is, but what if clicking "Link" made a small drop-down with the proper URL to copy, rather than being a simple link to the post? It could look similar to the vote count drop-down.

Someting similar to what bit.ly does on their site would sense too.

Which is?

COOL! I see that tonight you have added a topic header! I was kind of looking for something like that. Before today, I had to look at the web address bar to recall what the topic was. Thanks for making CoasterBuzz so much fun, Jeff!

I would have started a new topic to say this, but the "Post new topic" button doesn't do anything in both Firefox and Safari. Maybe it's a Mac thing.

It's not a Mac thing. Try to shift-reload and try again.

And I'm even more grateful for the topic banner since I use Chrome, which doesn't have a title bar at all, and since I read posts by clicking the blue icon on Recent Topics, I hardly ever see the top of the page. Chrome does put the title info in the tab, but if I have a lot of tabs open they can get pretty small.

Hmmm...the topic header is nice, but it eats up some screen real estate for reading.

It's very clear to me after reading forums for decades that people have varying opinions and perspectives on just about everything.

So, why can't there be a settings menu in a user's account where they have the ability to to customize the page to their particular liking? For example, a check box to disable page merging, add topic headers, increase/decrease the horizontal reading area, increase/decrease text size, add message borders, etc.?

Maybe this would all add complexity and result in more site issues?