I usually read blogs in a feedreader. And I'll admit it freely; I loathe blogs that supply only partial posts in their feed. The rationale behind it is to drive people to the ad-ridden site, but I'm already working on a piece for Profy about why that's generally the wrong way to go about it. The folks who are actually clicking on the myriad of ads on your blog probably aren't using a feedreader anyway. And you are just annoying the ones who do.

At any rate, I read blogs in the reader, then click over to an article if I want to join in the discussion. It's been an interesting exercise lately, however, since I installed NoScript, which blocks all but allowed Java and Javascript code from running in the browser, adding an additional wall between your computer and any malicious web sites out there. I clicked through on the feed link to the blog to leave a comment and found (and I wish I were kidding) 29 scripts attempting to run. TWENTY-NINE SCRIPTS. On a BLOG.

I didn't leave a comment. I'll probably never leave a comment again, because I can't even figure out which of the 29 scripts is required to run in order to leave a comment. And I'm not about to go through and figure it out. It's almost like Facebook is becoming a disease spreading to blogs; you must have every single possible widget installed no matter how useless it is, or how much additional time is needed to load the page.

I'm not usually a fan of the Google less-is-more theory of UI design, but when it comes to blogs, people really need to pare the garbage down and just leave the relevant things. People who are looking for quality content need to find a non-intrusive way of getting it. And we need to figure out a better way of monetizing content and marketing it without inundating readers with widgets.