Do we need to provide pagination for a directory structure?
In a typical web UI, pagination is usually provided for lists. However, I would like to know whether it makes sense to provide pagination for a tree structure like a directory structure since it may contain files as well as other directories.
My dilemma is that we are combining two different entities i.e a directory and a file to show this list. Moreover a directory is equivalent to a container of files. Each time we enter a directory, the context changes and the pages displayed are relevant to the current directory. That means a user who has navigated to the inner most directory must be able to switch to any page of its parent directories and this may require multiple pagination rows to be show.
For example:
Folder A > Folder B > Folder C > Folder D
Folder D: 1 2 3 4
Folder C: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Folder B: 1 2 3 4
Folder A: 1 2 3 4 5