Background: I made a massive post some time ago, when I compiled my Desert Island C90 tape.  It felt really long as I created it and subsequently edited it quite a few times and added to it.  There are 24 tracks on the post, each with a little bit of blurb and embedded video and, added to that, some introductory blurb and ‘buy it’ Amazon MP3 options.

The thought occurred to me that maybe I should come up with a method of splitting it up into manageable chunks to make it easy for the reader.  So, how to do…?

First off, I went for a straight forward “next page – prev page” option.  So, after the intro, and after every 4 tracks, I split the post and inserted a next/prev page option at the top and bottom of each page.  However, I wasn’t mad about that method because you couldn’t tell how much was still to come to the end of the post.

Next, I used the same split, but went for the ‘prev  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 next‘ style option to select, again at the top and bottom.  Again, it wasn’t knocking me out because, while you could get an idea how much there was to see, you couldn’t tell what was on each page without going there.

Then, it occurred to me that for either of these options and, in fact, any split, the user ends up with more work to achieve the same result and therefore were less likely to stick with it.  ie. they’d have to scroll to the bottom and click a total of six times to get to the end of the post. Steve Krug would be spitting feathers.

So, I’ve come to the following conclusion(s);

• Web users browsing blogs know what they are doing and can navigate.
• If they are interested they will stick with a long post, if not, they will navigate away.
• Blog readers prefer less clicking/page loads to get to what they want.
• Blogs aren’t printed on paper, ergo traditional paper rules don’t apply, so why paginate?

So, I’ve put in some occasional “Top” option in the post, to allow quick navigation to the beginning of the post.  Short, sharp and effective.

And that reminds me of another book review I need to do…