For example, suppose I have a view which has 'Back' and 'Next' button to switch pages :
My question is, is it necessary to dim the 'Back'/'Next' button when first/last page is reached? Is the page number already indicate if it is in the first/last page? (My motivation to avoid dimmimg is because the dim function needs extra programming code to handle it)
Generally in these pagination type functionalities, you omit the use of a back/next button if the option doesn't exist (for first (back) and last page (next) respectively).
This is because a disabled state communicates that the action is possible, just not at this particular time. Depending on the use of back/next buttons, it can be appropriate to use a 'finish' button to complete the process (for wizards and generally any process with an 'end' to it). For search functionality, It is better to not show the button if a user cannot interact with it. There is no 'ending' in this context, just a back and forth motion between results.
Giving the user extra cues towards the state of the interface is always a good idea. If you don't dim the back/next button, what happens when the user does press the button? Nothing?
If the pages are used in a wizard, you may also consider changing the text on the last page to 'finish', or something similar.
Avoiding enhancing the usability of your product because it will be extra work will most likely result in an unusable product leading to even higher costs, due to possible failure or having to invest in improving usability afterwards. Furthermore, that functionality should not be a lot of work for any experienced programmer.
To be short, for me, not seeing that extra dim (disabling) probably would make me also try to click the "Next button" as an extra effort (It depends on people and the case happening at but in the end still arguable anyway).
Clicking and seeing nothing happens other than easily anticipating it from an ease of a slight dim, would not be the choice of vast majority in that case I suppose and I experienced till now.
Extra:
>Eventough it's not the appropriate platform for asking an implementation for programming problems I wanted to simply describe the solution in the ease of even you can make by yourself with a little research.
To say,
- After finding the variable, representing the index of current page from one of the javascript files you have (you may search for related named variables in the folder search),
- You'll just add a single line of check whether you reached the end of the index count or not,
- If it's reached, dimming properties will be added to your HTML by a CSS class (there are many ways to handle indeed) inside that check.
And that's all.
