Enhance Website User Experience: Keeping Track of Scroll Position When Users Navigate Back in Browser

Question

Enhance Website User Experience: Keeping Track of Scroll Position When Users Navigate Back in Browser

Have you ever experienced the frustration of scrolling through a page with infinite scroll, only to click on a link and then go back to find that you've lost your place in the scroll?

You're scrolling down a lot,
You click on a link from the infinite list,
You don't like what you've clicked on,
You go back,
You want to continue scrolling from where you left off,
But all the items you were scrolling through are no longer there, forcing you to start over from the beginning.

How do you typically handle these situations? Is there a solution that you know of? Is there a way to save the state of the page or at least remember where you left off so that the proper amount of the infinite list can be loaded and the user can be scrolled to the last seen item?

javascript ajax scroll infinite-scroll dynamic-pages

Answer 1

Answer №1

When scrolling under certain conditions, new content needs to be appended to the page. This can be achieved by loading the content through methods like using an ajax call to fetch data. For instance, if you load ten items every time, you can keep track of the number of times you have loaded additional data. This information can be stored, for example, using an anchor link:

www.site.tld/index.php?id=999#load_counter=5

Alternatively, you could save this information using cookies. It's important to determine the optimal time to save this data, such as after each AJAX call or when the user navigates away from the page using the onbeforeunload event.

Upon page load, you can check for this metadata in the cookie or URL. If present, you can load the corresponding content by making an AJAX request to load the previously loaded items. In the given example, this would be

5 * 10

as the load_counter is 5 and 10 items were loaded each time. The position of the user can also be reconstructed by saving information about how much the user has scrolled or by making an educated guess based on the assumption that the user was viewing the most recently loaded items. For instance, you could scroll to the element (5-1)*10, which is the first element of the last batch.

Answer 2

When scrolling under certain conditions, new content needs to be appended to the page. This can be achieved by loading the content through methods like using an ajax call to fetch data. For instance, if you load ten items every time, you can keep track of the number of times you have loaded additional data. This information can be stored, for example, using an anchor link:

www.site.tld/index.php?id=999#load_counter=5

Alternatively, you could save this information using cookies. It's important to determine the optimal time to save this data, such as after each AJAX call or when the user navigates away from the page using the onbeforeunload event.

Upon page load, you can check for this metadata in the cookie or URL. If present, you can load the corresponding content by making an AJAX request to load the previously loaded items. In the given example, this would be

5 * 10

as the load_counter is 5 and 10 items were loaded each time. The position of the user can also be reconstructed by saving information about how much the user has scrolled or by making an educated guess based on the assumption that the user was viewing the most recently loaded items. For instance, you could scroll to the element (5-1)*10, which is the first element of the last batch.

Answer 3

Answer №2

While this question may lack specificity, I can provide some insights:

One possible reason why the page keeps reloading and resetting could be due to browser caching restrictions. If the page containing the scroll doesn't necessarily need to have pragma:no-cache, consider removing it. This might resolve the issue as it allows the browser to return to the previous state.
If the above solution doesn't work or if you require fresh data with each page load, the approach will vary depending on your content and framework. You could consider storing the state server-side in the session and rebuilding the page accordingly, or utilizing a cookie with a reference and having client-side script monitor progress until the reload.
In situations where infinite scrolling frameworks acknowledge the issue but don't provide a straightforward solution, consider implementing explicit pagination as an alternative.

Answer 4

While this question may lack specificity, I can provide some insights:

One possible reason why the page keeps reloading and resetting could be due to browser caching restrictions. If the page containing the scroll doesn't necessarily need to have pragma:no-cache, consider removing it. This might resolve the issue as it allows the browser to return to the previous state.
If the above solution doesn't work or if you require fresh data with each page load, the approach will vary depending on your content and framework. You could consider storing the state server-side in the session and rebuilding the page accordingly, or utilizing a cookie with a reference and having client-side script monitor progress until the reload.
In situations where infinite scrolling frameworks acknowledge the issue but don't provide a straightforward solution, consider implementing explicit pagination as an alternative.

Answer 5

Answer №3

This method is quite general and may require adjustments based on the specific front-end framework being utilized.

scrollTop is responsible for maintaining the vertical scroll position. By caching this value, you can easily return to the same scroll position where you last interacted.

// Obtain a reference to the scrollable div
const element = document.getElementById("scrollableDiv");

// Save element.scrollTop in local storage
window.localStorage.setItem('scrollTop', element.scrollTop);

// Retrieve stored scrollTop value upon returning to the previous page
const scrollTop = window.localStorage.getItem('scrollTop')

// Apply the scrollTop value to the scrollable div, positioning the scroll thumb where it was last left
document.getElementById("scrollableDiv").scrollTop = scrollTop;

Answer 6

This method is quite general and may require adjustments based on the specific front-end framework being utilized.

scrollTop is responsible for maintaining the vertical scroll position. By caching this value, you can easily return to the same scroll position where you last interacted.

// Obtain a reference to the scrollable div
const element = document.getElementById("scrollableDiv");

// Save element.scrollTop in local storage
window.localStorage.setItem('scrollTop', element.scrollTop);

// Retrieve stored scrollTop value upon returning to the previous page
const scrollTop = window.localStorage.getItem('scrollTop')

// Apply the scrollTop value to the scrollable div, positioning the scroll thumb where it was last left
document.getElementById("scrollableDiv").scrollTop = scrollTop;

Enhance Website User Experience: Keeping Track of Scroll Position When Users Navigate Back in Browser

Answer №1

Answer №2

Answer №3

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