I've been doing some thinking recently about the pagination of my photo albums in Monkey Album. As of this writing, I have 34 photo albums posted, and they are broken across 4 pages (9 albums per page). My main problem with the current layout is that discovering that there are additional pages isn't as easy or prominent as it probably should be. Here's a screenshot of the current layout, with the pagination hints and elements highlighted:
My goal is to let the user know that there are more than 9 total albums. The first hint I provide is highlighted at the top of the screenshot, showing that the user is viewing albums X to Y of Z total albums (in the screenshot, we're viewing albums 1 to 9 of 34 total). This is a helpful hint, but it sort of gets buried in the page. Perhaps the font face and color doesn't help in this regard (in fact, I discovered last night that the font looks terrible when not using ClearType anti-aliasing). Does this hint feel buried to anyone else?
Page navigation buttons reside at the bottom of the page (the lower highlighted section in the screenshot). As a result of displaying 9 albums per page, and as it appears on my laptop with a screen resolution of 1400 x 1050, the navigation buttons are below the fold (to borrow a newspaper term). In other words, the user has to scroll down to see them. When the buttons do come into view, their small size doesn't particularly help matters in discovery. In addition, having the "Favorite Photos" section directly beneath them also contributes to their getting lost.
With all that said, however, I'm not certain I know of a way of making my older photo albums, which appear on subsequent pages, more discoverable. Does anyone have any ideas or recommendations on how the current pagination scheme could be improved? I could display all my albums on one long page, but (a) the page becomes quite long, and (b) the Favorite Photos section gets pushed way down the page, losing prominence.
If you have a suggestion or idea for improvement, let me know in the comments!