How many ways do I need to navigate through an article on the Boston Globe’s website? Apparently at least three according to the folks at Boston.com.

Never mind the point that these artificial page breaks serve no purpose other than to generate more page views which don’t really benefit advertisers, and just pad the Globe’s numbers. (I never do understand what most people have against scrollbars.) If you really want me to be able to page around the article, why do I need three different ways to do it. I suppose it wouldn’t be so incredibly lame if all the mechanisms didn’t end up within a few pixels of each other making them extra pointless. Can’t I enjoy the recap of the Patriots kicking ass without being assaulted by three different pieces of ui each begging me to turn the page?

I suppose as long as I need my daily fix of Boston sports writing, I’m going to have to put up with this silliness. At least the site is consistent. Their design hasn’t fundamentally changed (except to get uglier, louder, and to pad their page views) in what seems like eight years. While I would never compliment a New York entity over its competition in Boston in the Sports world, I have to say that the New York Times is light years ahead of the Boston Globe in terms of web presence. Ironically, they’re both owned by the same company.