Infinite Scroll
In one sentence
Content that loads continuously as the visitor scrolls, with no page boundaries.
Analogy Mental model
An escalator with no floors marked. You keep moving and never learn where you are.
In practice What you actually do
Keep a paginated version for crawlers and for anyone who wants to link to something specific. Update the URL as the visitor scrolls using the history API, so each position has an address that can be shared and fetched.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Scroll-only interfaces hide everything past the first screen from a crawler that does not scroll. If the content matters, it needs a URL, and that URL has to be reachable without JavaScript.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →