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Can we make the FireFox AutoPager Add-On work at Hypography?


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Just curious if the Firefox AutoPager Add-On can be made to work at Hypography. It would make thread scrolling much simpler, but I'm not sure what type of development such an implementation would entail, so leave it to you.

From a quick read of it’s FAQs, I’d say “yes” to “can Autopager be made to work at Hypography?” but think InfiniteNow misunderstands the essentials of how Autopager and similar apps/plugins work, and thus what’d be involved in getting it to work.

 

Though I’ve not tried it, Autopager appears to scans through a loaded webpage, locates its “next page” link, and causes it to be automatically clicked when one scrolls his browser past the end of the current page’s content. It has a feature, Discover, that attempts to locate the “next” button automatically. If Discover can’t figure this out, the user must manually configure it for a particular website. It’s author has a FAQ on how to do this here – not the most detailed and explicit documentation every, but a starting point. I didn’t see any support boards for it at mozilla.org or teesoft.info, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

 

There’s no need to make any changes to the website to allow Autopager – in this case, hypo, by our dev team – to work on it. Once you, the Firefox with Autopager plugin user, have gotten it working here, I expect it will work on any site running a similar version of hypography’s forum engine, Vbulletin.

 

It's possible, given the popularity of Vbulletin, that if you drop Autopager's author, Wind Li, a note, he'll fix Discover in a future version of Autopager to be able to automatically handle hypography and other Vbulletin powered sites.

 

I personally don’t much like the idea of having a plugin take over thread page navigation for me, so don’t expect I’ll try Autopager, but if others do, and figure out how to set it up to work at hypography, posting a “how to” in this thread would be a help to others who’d like to.

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There’s no need to make any changes to the website to allow Autopager – in this case, hypo, by our dev team – to work on it. Once you, the Firefox with Autopager plugin user, have gotten it working here, I expect it will work on any site running a similar version of hypography’s forum engine, Vbulletin.

 

It's possible, given the popularity of Vbulletin, that if you drop Autopager's author, Wind Li, a note, he'll fix Discover in a future version of Autopager to be able to automatically handle hypography and other Vbulletin powered sites.

Hmmm... That's why I asked. I DO frequent other vbulletin powered sites, and they DO autopage without any effort from me. When I first visited after installing the Add On, a window popped up telling me that the site developers had a patch (or some similar) to allow AutoPager to work on their site. I clicked "Ok," and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

 

I haven't been able to get it to work here at Hypography, but I also haven't looked too closely at the manual programming approach to the application. I'll see if I can sort out the syntax and code requirements on my own, as that seems to be the larger implication of Craig's post... that I can accomplish this without help from site admins.

 

Thanks, Craig. I'll see what I can figure out.

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Thanks again to both of you. That was way easier than I thought it would be, and I got it working after just a few seconds.

 

Sorry for opening this thread and asking you to do work which was really something I could personally achieve, and ultimately my own responsibility. I really had no idea.

 

 

This makes reading from page to page way simpler. Cheers. :photos:

 

 

 

EDIT: The code has been uploaded to the AutoPager site, so if anyone else uses autopager, it will automatically bring forth the correct code for Hypography when you run your next update.

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I personally don’t much like the idea of having a plugin take over thread page navigation for me, so don’t expect I’ll try Autopager

Craig - Just to clarify, that's not quite how it works.

 

 

Basically, as you scroll toward the end of the page, you still have the option to physically click to the next page. However, with AutoPager turned on, as you near the end of the page, the browser grabs the data for that next page and displays it lower on the screen... but still on the same page.

 

Basically, you get to see Page 1 AND Page 2 on the same screen. There is a little separating line which says basically "Page Break from AutoPager Here," and as you continue to scroll within the same screen, you see the contents of the next page.

 

Then, as you near the end of Page 2, the AutoPager will load the content of Page 3 below that... and you can basically keep going until there are no further pages... all on one screen... with no redirects (and, if you hit Ctrl+Home, you come back to the beginning of Page 1, not just to the beginning of the page you're currently reading).

 

 

You have the option to load 1 page at a time, or 3 pages at a time, or really however many pages you want at once. I just do one page, and have the browser detect when I'm nearing the end of the page. This ensures the autopager will load automatically the next page,,, but that it won't do so for me until I get close to the end of the page which I'm currently reading.

 

It's really cool in threads with multiple pages. You essentially just open Page 1 of a discussion, and keep rolling down with your scroll bar... regardless of how many thread pages or posts there are in the discussion. Or... you can open some page in the middle, and autopager will load automatically below that any following pages... No need to click "Next" and wait for the new page to load.

 

Where I REALLY love it is when I'm reading science journals or news articles which have multiple pages. I just open the story, and keep reading until I'm at the end. I don't have to pause... click the link for the next page... then start reading again, because the next page already appears below the first page's footer. :scratchchin:

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Out of curiousity, how does this work with ad placements? I assume that less ads are served when autopager is activated in someone's browser. When you read a 5-page science article online and you use autopager, it seems that the site owner would lose 4/5 of ad serving from that user. Yes/no?

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