Posted On: 2021-05-10
It's been brought to my attention (several times) that my blog posts can be a bit difficult to navigate. The initial design of having users return to one central hub (the "blogs" page) when they wanted to view another post was reasonable, as there were only a handful of posts. Since then, I've written over 150*, and the user experience of reading through that backlog has significantly suffered. Readers have requested the seemingly simple feature of a "previous" and "next" button - and I've long wanted to fulfill that request.
Despite being a relatively simple feature to describe, I knew tackling it would not be straightforward: this blog actually uses a rather aggressive caching system that largely prohibits one page referring to another. Until now, I'd put it off, saying that it'd be better to focus on my project or actual blog content, rather than rewriting how the caching works. Today, however, I decided to do the exact opposite: instead of writing, I rolled up my sleeves and dug into my code. Fortunately, I was able to complete the work and also find enough time to write about it. I hope you enjoy this new feature - and, as always, if you have any thoughts or feedback, please let me know.