There’s a snazzy new feature we’ve seen a couple places that we just had to look into. When users reach the bottom of a page, more content is loaded. So, rather than users closing the window (or having to click a “next page†link), you can given them more to read. For sites with a significant amount of content, this makes for endless scrolling.
There’s a short delay, while an Ajax call, retrieves more content and pastes it below. Otherwise, it’s a smooth transition to the next bundle of blog posts, photos, or links. You can see endless scrolling in the wild at lifestreaming service Soup.io, link-sharing site DZone, Google Reader (if you have an account), or this demo of the technology. Just scroll to the bottom of any of those pages.
If this is something you want to implement there’s a JQuery implementation for endless scrolling. As with many snazzy JavaScript tricks, you’ll need a server-side component to send the next set of data.
See also:
- Is JavaScript Part of the ‘Real’ Web or Not?
- A Thousand Points of Lightbox
- Make a Cropping Tool For Your User Avatars