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Article pagination... good or bad?

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Stephen Toub started this discussion over on the MSDN Magazine Blog, and I wanted to throw it out to our readers as well.  To quote Stephen:

Some of the articles in the magazine are relatively long, and on the Web site, each article shows up as an individual page, which can mean quite a bit of scrolling when reading an entire piece.  In scenarios like this, other sites frequently use pagination, where they divide an article up into some number of pages, and rather than scrolling, you click "next" or a particular page number to move around.  This is a behavior we've always decided against, preferring the one-page scrolling approach, but we're now considering pagination again, and your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

Which style do you prefer?  Is pagination something we should add to our site?  And if we do, should we provide the option to read the content either way, or would you always prefer one versus the other?

I'm curious to hear what readers of TechNet Magazine think about this.  Please let us know!

-Josh

Link to MSDN Magazine : Article pagination... good or bad?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2007
    i don't mind pagination as long as there is a link for a "printable version" that brings up the entire article as a single formatted text file. in a way, i think this can make an article easier to read (or more consumable).

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2007
    Users, being users will demand both, especially since you have now proferred both as viable solutions. ;-) Personally however, I prefer using the mousewheel. I would presume that you would need to default to the paginated version however, since downloading the whole article in order to enable pagination would be a tad annoying for the other users perferring that method!

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2007
    For me, pagination is annoying and like reading a paper print mag where following the article is like following a rabbit trail when searching for the next the page. I prefer individvual pages which allow for quick reading and scrolling and a print friendly page.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2007
    I do not read as much online but, given the option, I would like it both ways if possible.