the web as it ought to be

I use Safari as my default browser on the Mac, and the feature I am most thankful for is Reader View. We all have the experience, probably every single day, of opening a webpage only to have the text we want to read obscured by popover ads, which we dismiss only to be assaulted by autoplaying videos and blinking ads. All that represents a money-making strategy I just don’t understand: yes, I know sites need to run ads, but ads that make it literally impossible to read their content? How can that be good? I just don’t get it. 

So day after day I scramble to hit the Reader View button, and then set the browser to always open pages from that domain in Reader View. Then, finally, I can read the article … which, four times our of five, turns out not to be worth reading. 

So let us now praise TidBITS, the venerable Applecentric website. Take a look at this article. What a clean, readable design! Nothing to interfere with my reading the article — and wow, what a fine article! Informative, clearly written, just the right level of detail. (I knew it would be good before I read a word because of Glenn Fleishman’s name on the byline — everything he writes is worth reading.) 

Why can’t more of the internet be like this? 

In gratitude, I went right to the Membership page and put my money where my typing fingers are. I would suggest you do the same for any websites that give you the same feeling.