Pagination: allowing the user to decide number of records

I've attached a screenshot of one of our widgets that has pagination that
can be adjusted.

I can say that since then our later revision (not released yet) has removed
this feature. Reviewing in testing showed that it confused users and most
didn't care so long as the number selected was manageable.

What seemed more important to "our" users was the ability to remove
pagination. They would generally rather scroll than to click through even
when that click through is managed using AJAX technology which is what we do
today so that there isn't a blink.

Also, since many of our lists have expand/collapse trees as part of the
tables, it is confusing that some have pagination and some don't.

I realize there are non-user reasons to have pagination, such as performance
restrictions in an application. That was something we had as well.

A solution to that, is "controlled" scrolling. When you hit a certain point
in the scrolling you then begin the query to fill in the next acceptable
amount under it. From the user's perspective there is a small hiccup in the
system, but very similar to the types of hiccups you get when using windows
today.

2 thing2 about our pagination solution that's enclosed:
1. there are 2 pagination widgets (top and bottom). The scroll happens
between them.
2. The top one gives # information and bottom one allows for changing the #
viewed.

Enjoy!
-- dave

On 1/17/06 3:57 PM, "Louise Ferguson" <louise.ferguson at gmail.com> wrote:

> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
>
> On 17/01/06, Olga Fernandez <olga_fd at nethodical.com> wrote:
>>
>> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
>> material.]
>>
>> Hi Bryan,
>>
>> * Does anyone have any good examples of user interfaces for pagination
>> which
>> allow the user to decide how many records are shown per page? *
>>
>> Have you seen this kind of solution?
>> Show: 10 20 30 All
>
>
> Gmail:
> under Settings
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> with 25/50/100)
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> Louise
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-- dave

David Heller
http://synapticburn.com/
http://ixdg.org/
Dave (at) ixdg (dot) org
Dave (at) synapticburn (dot) com
AIM: bolinhanyc || Y!: dave_ux || MSN: hippiefunk at hotmail.com

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Great work on the course scheduler - very smooth!

-r-

On 1/17/06, Travis Chillemi <1080media at gmail.com> wrote:
> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
>
> We created something like this in our new course scheduler (still under
> development)
>
> http://courses.cudenver.edu/
>
> Do a simple search for courses and look at the bottom of the results to see
> what I mean.

Well designed, to often I see this selection in an ugly dropdown list. I see that the last selection is kept as well, so you dont fall back to 10/page with every new search.

However there is one detail, in my opinion. I would suggest putting the 10/20/50 selection at the top as well. This is especially interesting when you hit results that initially spans for 1-3 pages. Its often easier to have them on just one page and scroll through them with page down/up.

------------------------------
Håkan Reis
Senior .NET Consultant - MCAD
Dotway AB

hakan.reis(at)dotway.se
blog.reis.se

On 2006-01-17 Travis Chillemi wrote:

[Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
>
>We created something like this in our new course scheduler (still under
>development)
>
>http://courses.cudenver.edu/
>
>Do a simple search for courses and look at the bottom of the results to see
>what I mean.
>
>We are capturing data on how often it is used.
>