We used to let people browse and page through photo galleries by preloading the next columns or rows of photos, then on click URL swapping under the static HTML page grid. The order you replace the URLs gives a visual of a paging motion.

And for infinite pages, a long forgotten technique: for scrolling or continuing content, you could use "multipart" since the 90s, effectively streaming the additional page content to the user as you got more bytes to send them.