Over the years I have used many different interfaces for accessing the STEEM blockchain. Like many of us, it all started with Steemit, from there I moved to Busy, Esteem, Partiko, Steepshot, Spinterlands, the list goes on.
Now, I basically stick to a handful of interfaces for accessing the chain. I still use Steemit for reading posts at my desk and replying to them. For writing posts at my desk I use busy.org and for everything mobile I use Partiko pretty exclusively.
Just today, I noticed something that was pretty concerning? Annoying? I am not exactly sure what the correct word should be here.
Let's get two things out of the way right away: Yes, I do most of my surfing in Google Chrome and I use an ad blocker extension to keep ads from popping up all over my screen. Also, I fully understand and support why Steemit has started using ads. It just makes sense from a business standpoint.
With the markets sitting where they are, you need to cut costs and increase revenue. Advertising is a way to do that. It is pretty rare to find a site on the web these days that doesn't have some form of advertising.
Here is the problem as I see it: By some odd coincidence my ad blocker extension needed some new permissions and until I granted them it simply shut off. Silly me, I didn't realize this and instead have just been using Steemit for the past week with the ads on.
I have to be honest, it was pretty horrible. The ads were so pervasive that it was a pain to scroll through the pages of information. On top of that many of the posts that I wanted to read had the post title or other parts of the text cut off because the ads were covering half the page.
It becomes fairly obvious that there is a huge difference between adding ads to an existing page and creating an interface that has the appropriate formatting for both content and ads. The interface for Steemit is definitely the former and pretty much exactly the way it was when I started on here close to two years ago. It wasn't made for ads and in my opinion (and a lot of other people's I think), it is time for a rework.
A refresh of the Steemit interface would go a long way towards bringing in new people. 
Sure, most people are probably using ad blockers like me, but that kind of defeats the purpose. If they were to create a clean interface that accommodates both the content and the ads, I wouldn't have a problem turning off my ad blocker for the Steemit site just to help support the cause.
That isn't the reality right now so for me, I will continue to keep my ad blocker on and hope for the day that they do a refresh of the interface.
I know that Steem and Steemit are separate beasts, but it is a bit hard to view Steem in as NewSteem when the flagship front end is still in the dark ages.
