Infinite scrolling & accessing an item in the middle directly

Question

Let's say you have a webpage in which you display a list of cards with some content. You use infinite scrolling to load more cards as the user scrolls down.

Cards are moreover editable: you can click an icon in the card to turn it into a text editor and change its content.

Assuming cards are also permalinkable, and you want such a link to allow the user to go directly to the linked item inside the list, what would be the best choice if you linked such a card that is, say, several "scrolling pages" down?

Would it be best to display the opened item at the top as it if were the first of the list, and start loading the other ones down, or show it in the middle of the list? And if so, would it be best to load all the items before it, even if it's a lot of them?

Generally speaking, what's best when it comes to permalinking in relation with infinite scrolling?

Answer 1

I suspect that there isn't a 'best practice' when it comes your question, because it depends on a number of different factors that will provide the best user experience. The tricky thing about displaying something that has a permalink when the page allows infinite scrolling is how you would provide that fixed point of reference on the page for the user to navigate between the different viewing modes.

I am guessing that you actually have some part of the page that is fixed or anchored to a specific area (e.g. top navigation banner or some header section), so you could potentially extend that area to have a "recently viewed" or "search result" block to display anything that has a permalink reference to it. Then you can place the rest of the cards (however you want to sort/list them) down the page as you please.