[ music | Dave Brubeck – Unsquare Dance ]

Now, first off, I think The Rumbling Edge is a nice blog that does a great job of covering Thunderbird related updates, much like The Burning Edge does for Firefox related changes. However, considering it is being hosted by MozillaZine, I think it’s a little top-heavy about ads. Here’s an illustrated screencap of the first screen, or “above the fold”, what you see before you scroll down. My screen is 800 pixels high, and I’ve cut out most of the chrome in the screenshot. The numbers below deal just with the content pane, also. Red is ads, green is content, blue is “chrome” like the title and RSS feed link, and the grey is whitespace.

Now, roughly 43% of that is whitespace. 46% is ad space or revenue-generating links such as the ones to download Firefox, etc. 6% is actual content, namely links to recent builds, and the download counter. I’m being generous with the term “content” here by defining it as useful updated information. Lastly, 5% is the title and tagline, and the RSS feed link. Even adding that into content, 46% of the above-the-fold area is ads, 11% is content. There is more ad-spade than whitespace. Further down there are two separate Paypal donation buttons. I’m all for making money off your work, but this is a little offensive. I have ads here, but none of it blocks content, and you don’t have to scroll to get to the content. I only hope some of that ad revenue is going back to MozillaZine.