Paging controls… when there are many pages

Paging controls are easy to design when there are just a handful of pages, typical of content sites where articles may extend over several pages.

But when there are hundreds or even thousands of pages—typical in search results—paging controls can easily get more complicated:

In general, users rarely venture beyond the first couple of pages of search results. If they don’t see what they are looking for after reviewing a page or two, they are likely to revise their search using terms that either narrow or broaden their original query.

In this situation, the ability to go directly to a specific page can be a secondary function—as shown in this simple, compact approach:

The only downside to this design is that users must both enter a page number and press Return—something that may not be immediately apparent to all users.