The future of the web is infinite scrolling, and WordPress.com sites are getting it

I’m a big fan of infinite scrolling on the web. In fact, whenever I see a “next” button, I cringe quite a bit. Thankfully, WordPress.com is stepping up to the plate and has announced that its sites will now include this fantastic feature.

Here’s what Lance Willett had to say on the WordPress.com blog today:

Say hello to the future of reading content on the web. Introducing a new feature for WordPress.com home pages, infinite scrolling.

It’s amazing, really—instead of the old way of navigating down a page by scrolling and then clicking a link to get to the next page, and waiting for a page refresh—infinite scrolling pulls the next set of posts automatically into view when the reader approaches the bottom of the page. Speed and performance are key: new content loads in quickly without a full page reload.

See this in action on Matt on Not-WordPress—Matt’s moblog. When you get to the bottom of the page, you’ll see a loading icon display briefly as the next posts load below.

The team has been introducing the feature, its currently available on 30 themes with more coming soon, and I have to say “what took you so long?” Having said that, it’s great to see something that the web is adopting come to fruition on hosted WordPress sites.

Infinite scrolling is a really great user experience, and has changed the way I use sites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s a real joy to scroll through the history of people’s thoughts and ideas now.

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The feature is turned on automatically for your site, but if you wish to turn it off you can jump into your site’s settings and do so.