One of the biggest struggles with forums and blogs can be finding the required information. Sure you can search for what you think you need, but you may miss out on a great article or reply because it didn’t match the keyword you used to search.
Another gripe about viewing forums, blogs, search results pages or photo galleries is the “Pagination” factor. At times you see several pages that you need to access and each time to go to a new page, you need to click on the “Next” button or link.
To eliminate the headache of scrolling to the bottom of the results page and clicking next, you can get the Auto Pager for Google Chrome.
AutoPager for Chrome – The setup
With Auto Pager, you will need to do some setting up before you use it. Once you install the extension – access the settings by right clicking on one of the extension buttons, then clicking on Manage extensions, you will see an Auto Page. Click on options.
There are a few options you can change in the settings menu. In the General setting box, you will see options to enable basic features. It is a good idea to have it prompt you for a new site. Doing so will let you add this to the Rules governing how the Auto Pager treats the new page.
Working in Lite mode will be less resource intensive. Meaning if your browser is already a little slow, click this option on.
The Rules are what drives Auto Pager. As you go to a new site with multiple pages, you will see a pop-up asking you if you want to enable the settings found for that page. Click Yes. You may need to reload the page for the new settings to take effect.
Using Auto Pager
What will happen is, when you get to the bottom of the page, instead of clicking Next, you will simply keep scrolling. There will be a page break so you know what page you are on.
In the page break, you will see options to load a specific page, skip to the top, skip to the bottom or skip to the next or earlier page quickly. Here is a close up of those controls.
There is a Firefox version of this extension. It works the same way as the version for Chrome. In looking through their how-to section, it looks as though you need to create your own rules in the Firefox version, export them, then import them into chrome. Here is their tutorial on how to create a new rule in the Firefox version of Auto Pager.
Conclusion
Auto Pager is a great add-on for anyone who frequents forums and photo galleries. It will save you a lot of clicking on Next and waiting for the page to load. Being able to scroll right to the next page and the next and the next without needing to stop is like heaven for the times you are researching a topic and need to go through a lot of material.
