Feature proposal: Disambiguate "Load More" button

[mcclure]

The "Load More" button is a recurring source of controversy. I see it as having two problems: First off, it is confusing whether it loads "up" or "down", leading to the existence of an even more confusing (see #3988) "Reading Order" preference. Second off, some users simply don't like Load More. Some users (not me, but we've received this feedback) would prefer an "infinite scroll" model like some competing apps use. (Infinite scroll was originally slated for v24, but has been deferred.)

I have a proposal which would address problem (1) and possibly assuage problem (2) (by making the feature less annoying). My proposal comes in two parts, either of which could be implemented alone; the second will probably be more controversial.

1. Augment the Load More button with an arrow, indicating which direction it will load content when tapped.

2. Remove "reading order". Instead, have the Load More button load either up or down depending on where on the screen it is. If it is on the top half of the screen, it could load down; on the bottom half of the screen, it would load up.

   This would give better control, and also be more "discoverable" than the Reading Order option (because users would internalize the behavior "by accident" just by scrolling).

Mockup:

Things to consider:

• Do I have the ideal direction (load up from bottom, load down from top) reversed? I feel like "load up from top, load down from bottom" would be more natural, but I think we have to do it the way I describe above because "load up from top" would mean a load more button could get "stuck", unable to load down, if it ever somehow loaded very close to the top of a feed.
• Should the "show more" button remain in place when tapped, or move "past" the loaded content? I think we have to go with the second option for the same reason as before (avoiding the button getting "stuck").
• Would proposal 2 above interact badly with screen readers? Could we implement a separate, screen-reader-specific feature (for example two invisible buttons, named "load down" and "load up"?)

[belatedly]

On iOS I have used Toot! and Feditext (which is in beta atm). They both have an arrow on either side of the load text, and if you scroll upward, it will point them to load upwards. If you scroll downwards, they will redirect to point down and load downwards, just as suggested. If that is possible, it'd be ideal, speaking from the end user's perspective.

Should the "show more" button remain in place when tapped, or move "past" the loaded content? I think we have to go with the second option for the same reason as before (avoiding the button getting "stuck").

• The latter

Would proposal 2 above interact badly with screen readers? Could we implement a separate, screen-reader-specific feature (for example two invisible buttons, named "load down" and "load up"?)

• Are there simulators we could use to test it out / if we insert the arrows as images, could we use alt text to read out the direction? If not, it might be good to solicit for screenreader users to test it from the Mastodon account. One of my mutuals uses one and may be interested in assisting with that if needed.

[Lakoja]

Just some quick observation(s) from my side:

I think I like the idea with "find out which direction the user wants automatically" better (like recent scroll direction). But without thinking much about it, it sounds rather problematic and error-prone.
In any case the problem with that and your proposed solution here, I think is, that it's not very clear and/or reliable or understandable what will happen. Even if you read for example a "Load More Below", what does that mean? (old or new?)

My gut feeling would be: Leave it as it is until we can solidly improve it. (i. e. remove it completely and maybe "re-add" it as a well-being feature which simply stops somewhere "do you really want to continue?")

[bjorn-ove]

My biggest problem with "load more" is not the direction, but that makes it very hard to know where I was. I always read my feed in order, and if "load more" is needed I want it to leave my position in the feed unchanged.

My workflow now is to click "load more", then quickly scroll a few pages down. If I'm lucky some more content has been loaded. Then I click it again, and again until it goes away. Almost always, I end up far above my current position, and need to manually locate where I was by scrolling down.

[shtrom]

I have the same problem as @bjorn-ove here, and I think this would argue the opposite to the previously discussed approach.

Should the "show more" button remain in place when tapped, or move "past" the loaded content? I think we have to go with the second option for the same reason as before (avoiding the button getting "stuck").

* The latter

In my workflow (no Emacs involved), I'd prefer the load more button to stick at the bottom (if extending to the top).

Perhaps this need to be a configuration option?

[iandees]

I have the same workflow as @bjorn-ove , and dealing with the behavior of the Load More button is the most frustrating part of using Tusky.

Ideally it would just fill in the whole timeline with a single tap of Load More and keep my scroll position so I can continue reading the rest of the timeline.

[kilokang]

This is a duplicated of a feature I was going to request.

I used Twitter this way with Twidere because I had one account where I read all the tweets. I would like to have the same on the fedi if possible.

In the case of Twidere, instead of changing the direction depending on the position of the "Load more" it had a toogle in its settings.

In my humble opinion it would be awesome a mix of both, like a default direction where new toots are going to be loaded that can be set in the settings and that the "Load more" banner had a button or be able to swipe it like GMail:

[sn0n]

Here to also comment I want to uninstall tusky because of this load more button making me scroll down and wasting time looking for where I was, to scroll back up again ... Quite frustrating. Loading all would be best IMO, and loading up, so I don't have to scroll.

[bitmagewb]

Another vote to please leave the reader where they were before tapping 'Load more'.

[lukaprincic]

it would be amazing to have an option in preferences to turn off load more button

[richardhendricks]

I have a workaround (?). When I tap load more, I immediately scroll it up off-screen. When it fills, it doesn't move the posts I am currently viewing. I can then move up and see new posts. It's a kludge, but it gets the behavior I want.

[bitmagewb]

I have a workaround (?). When I tap load more, I immediately scroll it up off-screen. When it fills, it doesn't move the posts I am currently viewing. I can then move up and see new posts. It's a kludge, but it gets the behavior I want.

Thank you for this!

[vurpo]

The part I like the most about Toot!'s implementation is how you can very clearly see the direction it's going to load by looking at the arrows on the button, and you see those arrows changing in real time when you nudge the timeline a bit up or down. No guesswork involved, and you can always choose to load more timeline in any direction you choose. This is exactly what I wished Tusky would also do.