This came up on the podcast and got me thinking about the best way to organize/interact with content on the screen.

While pagination sometimes seems like a dated and unnecessarily skeuomorphic approach, it has many benefits: spacial organization, no constant interaction, a place to 'bookmark'

Scrolling works really well for smaller pieces and feels native to the screen, but the constant interaction and the 'edgeless' feeling that can come from longer pieces is a problem. It reminds one that a physical scroll is an outdated medium for a reason.

I haven't come to any final conclusions, I just wonder what you have struggled with or more points that may have been have missed in the considerations for how we interact with digital content.

It is on the current subreddit I see, but still pertinent to this conversation.

craigmod.com

Craig mentions scrolling not paginating as part of his "subcompact manifesto".

I think it makes sense as it distinguishes between navigation to content and navigation through content on a cognitive level.

Like Matt, I havn't come to any conclusions though. There are ways of solving some of the problems of scrolling. informationarchitects.net comes to mind - scroll and you will see a 'remaining time' indication appear next to the scroll bar - that helps with spacial organization. Perhaps bookmarking could be solved in some new innovative way, but again I think it depends on context.

Pagination and scrolling for me have two distinct purposes, text pagination is great to have, I can revisit later. For images I'd rather scroll through a galley. But infinite scroll gives me anxiety about finishing.