I spend all day on the Internet, mostly reading. I’ve had to get glasses. Those flashing and pop-up ads give me a headache. But there are a few sites that are doing text on the Internet right. Exhibit A: The Bold Italic. The Bold offers up tales of the city (it’s San Francisco specific at the moment) through the lens of what they’re calling “bold locals”- their writers. Each article is displayed on one page with story-specific design. It looks good, there’s care in the presentation, and it makes reading a more pleasant experience.

Boing Boing is doing something similar with their features. I find it very difficult to transition from reading pithy posts to longer investigations within the same blog template. To me, design makes a big difference. Boing Boing’s feature layouts signal that you’ll want to stay a while.

And when all else fails, there’s always Readability. Readability will banish ads and unwanted pictures from junk-heavy pages. It pulls just the text forward and renders it in the font of your choosing. I recently added the button to my browser and have found an excuse to use it almost every time I open a new tab.