Pagination: what do you need the “last page” button for?
A pagination sometimes includes first / last buttons like so:
<<first < prev 1 2 3 ... 9 next > last>>
I can understand the “first” button, because, well it quite makes sense go back to the first page of search results, etc...
As I understand, to move forward users will mostly use “Next” button.
And I can only imagine one use case for the “Last” button, it’s when you sort results by some numeric values (e.g. price) and want to see the most expensive items (vs. the least expensive ones on the first page).
Are there any other uses cases for the “last“ button? Where having the “last” is a must?
UPDATE #1
Please notice that the pagination in the example actually has a link to the last page
1 2 3 ... → 9 ←
Is adding explicit “last” works better (I’m assuming that numbers look like buttons with all necessary states and affordances)?
UPDATE #2
There are plenty of valid examples that emphasize the importance of the “last” things. My original rationale was that newer first — older last
filter is more convenient than last
link/button.
If you go to the last page to get the oldest/cheapest/etc. items, there is an issue because those items won’t appear at the top of the last page but rather at the end.
So you'll have to work it out bottom → top, right → left (in pages) which is less comfortable than sort oldest → new, and then process information in the usual way. But I agree some people may be used to the last page workflow.