Jumping to a page must allow direct entry
Aliases: go to page · page number field
What it is
Once the page count grows, reaching a distant page by tapping neighbours or Next costs linear time in distance. Direct page entry lets someone write the target number and land on that chunk in one step. It is far access, not whether page numbers exist, and not how many rows sit on a page. Without entry, pagination’s coordinates are only useful for nearby pages.
Why it happens
A page strip can paint only so many numerals. After an ellipsis folds the middle, those pages leave the tappable set. If the user already knows the target — a colleague’s “see page 18”, a coordinate they wrote down, an estimate “about the last third” — and is then forced to hammer Next or hunt inside an expanded ellipsis, the coordinate system has no matching vehicle. Entry wires “I know the number” straight to “arrive at the number”.
Entry also changes the error shape. A wrong neighbour tap is undone by another tap. Typing 180 when there are 18 pages jumps to an empty set or is silently clamped. Without a bound hint, people cannot tell whether they misremembered or the system dropped a page. Legal range, current value, and where illegal input goes belong to the same mechanism as the field itself.
Where it stops holding
With two or three pages total, an input is extra chrome; adjacent numerals already cover every target. On a small touch screen the keyboard covers the results, and typing may cost more than two taps on Next — a compact page stepper still has to allow a precise number, not only repeated taps. People who are scanning and do not know a target number will not use entry; entry must not replace paging. If page count thrashes when filters change, an just-stale number will miss; say that results have updated.
Applying it
- Put a focusable page-number field (or a Go to control) on the pager. On submit, jump to that page and scroll it into view.
- Show the legal range (1–N) before input. On overflow, refuse explicitly or say it was clamped to the bound; do not silently jump to page one.
- Keyboard submit should equal tapping Go. On touch, keep the field visible when the keyboard is up.
- How to check: give a number far from the current page (somewhere in the middle, near the end) and allow only the control, not repeated Next. If it cannot be reached, far access is missing. Then enter 0, a negative, a number greater than N, and empty; each should produce an understandable outcome, not a blank page.