Make skip 20 actually skip 20

[matgb]

Title:
Make skip 20 actually skip 20

Area:
Reading page

Summary:
Wouldn't it be nice if when you clicked the 'back 20 entries' link on your reading page that's actually what it did?

Description:
When reading entries on DW, if you skip back at the end of a page, if new entries have been made then the next page you load will have some entries you've already read. This is made worse if you sub a high-traffic comm, especially one with a moderator queue (*cough*DW_Suggestions*cough*).

If enough entries have been posted while you've been reading, it's possible the top entries on your new page are new to you, then it goes to entries you've read-some people may even stop then assuming they've skipped back, etc.

It's my understanding that when the reading page is loaded, it will load however many it's been set to by user preference, but will "know" what the next entry will be at time of load.

How about making the 'skip back X entries' link at the top/bottom of the page link not to ?skip=20 but instead, say, ?start_id=XXXX where XXX is the item id of the 21st entry on the reading page (ie the next one not loaded).

This way you can backread a lot quicker, reduce server load of duplicate entries, reduce bandwidth for those of us on a mobile connection, etc.

I can imagine that some people like the current style, so it may be necessary to make an option as to how it should work, but if the number who like this current setup is small option creep should be avoided?

Regardless, I got this idea directly from my web-based Twitter client which runs as a much better web interface for my preferences (ie it works like DW/LJ reading pages with no dynamic memory hogging scripts getting in the way), http://dabr.co.uk Log in there with a Twitter ID and you can see how it works,

Poll #7886 Make skip 20 actually skip 20

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 74

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
33 (44.6%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (4.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
23 (31.1%)

(I have no opinion)
13 (17.6%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (2.7%)

Comments

[jeshyr]

Having just switched from reading via RSS reader to reading via reading page I want to say OMG YES a lot to this suggestion.

The thing that bugs me most about having switched is that I have to make myself read all the older-but-unread entries before I flip back to read the newest unread things because otherwise I'll get hellaciously confused about where I'm up to. I liked being able to flip around so much in my RSS reader and this wouldn't totally fix that issue but it'd certainly help!