How to paginate a growing list?

Question

What's a good way to paginate a list that is constantly growing?

For example, a user may open page 2 of some listing, keep looking at it for a while and then open page 3. Meanwhile, new records have been added to the beginning of the list (page 1) and caused page 3 to contain items that could have been on page 2 previously.

Should such a list be paginated from the other end? Then how to deal with the front page and the fact that it would, without special attention, contain TOTAL NUMBER OF ITEMS % PAGE SIZE items (ie. not constant)?

Answer 1

Assuming you have a fixed page size, some specified ordering, and the user is specifying the page they wish to view, I would simply fetch the data accordingly. Trying to do anything more complicated than that will just end up causing you unnecessary headache and confuse the user.

I think the element you're missing here is the ordering. If you specify an ordering then the user will intuitively understand. Also, that's how the majority of pagination is done, so you're not deviating from what you're user really expects.

Answer 2

I'd add a warning to advise the user that new items have come in and allow them to refresh the list. If they choose not to then maintain list in the state it was in when they clicked on the "Page 2" button. You can use a timestamp on the URL to determine which version of the list to serve to which user.

Answer 3

I do not think it's a good idea to page through a growing list. You'd better recalculate items that should be displayed on a page everytime user performs an action.