well… call me crazy, but maybe the traffic dropped because w/ 30 results per page, people didn’t have to click onto the second or third page link?
Speed depends on the connection speed, too. Have they considered, that if they were not testing with the slowest possible connection type, then half a second is more than that for some people? Then there is only limited amount of time. If the speed is reduced, the customers do not have as much time to browse before they are going to eg. for a dinner.
But as more and more people are having faster connections, some sites are starting to put up more and more content. Like Music Television site, it has ads, pictures and lots of stuff around. But then again, MTV is a multimedia channel by nature, anyway. If you want multimedia over the web, you need a fast connection. Decision makers are noticing this trend for multimedia and are lobbying faster connections, which should take care of the problem, if implemented. Computers and connections get faster as technology gets better.
Scrolling is actually really slow / laborous. 1) You move your mouse to the scroll bar, including aiming at the bar knob. 2) You click and 3) hold down the mouse button. 4) You drag the mouse up or down and 5) release the mouse button. 6) Then you move the pointer back where it was, including aiming. So, unnecessary scrolling should be avoided.
Mark, do you mean that my mouse has only 1 button, the button? I meant by the button the left button, because it is obviously the button you click when dragging a scrollbar knob. If you didn’t mean this, but you meant, do I have a mouse that is so hard to use that its like from old days, then I say that no. My mouse is brand new.
Still it is more tedious to operate the scrolling than if you do not have to operate any scrolling. When we are trying to optimize a web page, not needing to scroll is one thing. Ok, it is fine to scroll, when the page is supposed to be large with lots of content. But if the content is not supposed to be large or the window could be bigger to fit the content anyway, or what ever, then unnecessary scrolling just feels so stupid that its getting on nerves. And why frustrate a user, when s/he can move to another web page in a blink of an eye. Or why not listen to an end user, who has to use the software every day.
Right, I could of course use my mouse’s scrolling wheel, too. Sometimes I use it, but it is not good when the page is really long. And I preferably stretch the page to fit all the content than scroll up and down.