The stupid tiny 'next page' buttons in so many forum designs is one of the main things that make my own forum software with nice big easy-to-click buttons: http://caerphoto.com/misc/forj_pagination.png I used buttons because as some have said, auto-loading stuff can be a bit annoying, and feels like you're not really in control of the app/page. Regarding an earlier commenter's point about overloading on HTML elements, I don't think removing elements from the front of the queue would be a particularly arduous task, and browsers are pretty good at handling large numbers of elements, though obviously it depends on the complexity and content of each new 'page' of items – for a forum consisting of mostly plain text, I would guess a user would get bored long before putting any significant strain on the rendering.