How in the Tech

Preventing articles from getting split across multiple pages

By Adam Myers ⋅ April 12, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Annoyances, Firefox

Even though Google Chrome is used regularly on my computers, I’m very slow to abandon Firefox – it just works for me. That may sound odd to many; why would you try and switch away from a browser that admittedly works for you you may ask? This blog requires me to try a lot of new software and I generally only bring forth things that interest me and that I use on a regular basis – but Chrome is a unique specimen. It’s gaining momentum daily and I find myself using it currently just to stay in touch with where everything is headed. Nevertheless, today I’m writing about the main reason that keeps me glued to Firefox – the extensive extensions collection.

Heavy Internet users likely come across this scenario every day; a website has an intelligent article and as you reach the bottom of the page you see it’s spread across a few more pages. This requires a click or three as you w0rk your way through completion. Generally, there are two reasons why websites do this. First, a split article limits the bandwidth being served, and consumed if you the reader are on a slower connection, because a measurable number of readers never make it more than a few paragraphs into anything. It’s essentially the Internet generations ADD. Secondly, one article can result in multiple visits and clicks, with each click resulting in more advertising and impressions for the website. While both have a leg of merit, I’ll leave you to decide which carries the most weight.

PageZipper is a simple Firefox extension that aims to do away with the split article practice. The extension integration with Firefox isn’t the cleanest on two fronts.

First, in order to toggle the functionality on or off the icon first needs added to the toolbar by the user – the install process does not do this. This can be done by right-clicking anywhere in the Firefox toolbar and choosing Customize.

Look for the PageZipper icon; hint it looks like a zipper! Drag and drop the icon anywhere on your Firefox toolbar.

Now when visiting a web page that has it’s content spread across multiple pages simply click the zipper icon, it will turn green when active, to enable. As you near the end of the first page, PageZipper will load the second page automatically – as triggered by looking for the Next link on the article.

The second part regarding the problem with it’s integration, PageZipper will load the entire link for each successive page and not completely integrate the content in a clean flow. Meaning, if the web page has a header graphic that is displayed atop each “page.”

PageZipper is a handy extension that manages to remove some of the annoyance that web content providers introduce for the sake of more views, yet still allows them to earn a living. It’s a decent compromise on both fronts.

Download PageZipper