Save my reading spot, damn it

2013-05-22 1 min read
    A typical view as single page option

    When reading a long form piece, I favor the single-page view. Unfortunately, I usually don’t find out that it’s longer than a page until I’ve finished the first page. At that point, I switch to the single page view which causes the entire page to reload and I have to skim the page to find the spot where I stopped reading.

    Why haven’t any of the major content sites dealt with this yet? It’s not a technical problem. All they’d need to do is have an anchor tag on the single page view to indicate the spot that the reader should be shown if they click the “View as Single Page” link after reading the first page. Do they just want to force their readers to look at the ads again? I’m sure this small change would save people hundreds of hours each day.

    If you know of any sites that handle this scenario well, let me know; I’d love to check them out and give them a shout out.