When searching Twitter, Pinterest, or many other famous websites recently, we may notice that they have changed the traditional page flipping mode into infinite scrolling. This infinite scrolling technology, which can load more pages without clicking buttons to jump to the next page, can show more results automatically. It do not like the traditional “preview 3 4 next” page mode. The websites that use the infinite mode usually have a very nice user interface function, and they alert users that more pages are loading.

Which do you prefer, Page flip or infinite scroll?

Someone may hate page, since page detracts from our reading speed and comprehension by breaking sentences and paragraphs in the middle. Most websites break their contents into pages so that they get more page views and advertising for the same amount of content. It is popular in traditional media, such as Google search. Scrolling is not always pleasant. That's why most websites break down their contents into pages without containing one long page.

Someone may consider that forcing a user to drag a finger to initiate a flip every time is unacceptable. Web pages scroll because they are designed to appear on so many different screens, each with a different resolution and size, and the content on each page varies greatly, even on the same site. They have to cater to a large audience and work well with vastly different contents, thus scrolling is an ingenious compromise. However, infinite scrolling is only available for the contents that have just plain texts, such as tweets in Twitter.

Page flip is fast without worrying the time of further pages reloading. While scrolling interface usually runs slowly and unstably. And if the document or sites contains hundreds of pages, we’ll never know where will be the end. And it may similar to be a PDF viewer. Then who would have interest in it?

Page flipping was common on news sites 10 years ago but has all disappeared now. Yet it still is the main mode in iBooks on iPad and Kindle, as if they were made by the flipbook creator. Will it be welcomed if the eBooks on iPad or Kindle are viewed by infinite scrolling, instead of page flipping? Then, a book will be easy to be turned to the last page without worrying about flipping with fingers.

Personally, I would go for page flip for e-books but scrolling seems to be more "natural" when it comes to reading magazines or promotional folders. And I think the ideal interface allows users to change how they read text - page by page, manual, or automatic scrolling.