I almost never read ESPN.com anymore.

Firefox produces memory leaks even if all you’ve got open is one tab showing Google.com. But if you open ESPN.com … your processor will start smoking.

ESPN.com used to have too much crap on its homepage, before the latest redesign. But now it’s got the dynamic Spotlight box that scrolls between four categories, which you can pause or resume. You know it’s a resource hog.

To make matters worse, the wheel-click that opens links in a new tab doesn’t work in the Spotlight box. Someone must have known about this ahead of time, because a right click will bring up a menu with three options: Open, Open in new window, and Copy link. Apparently this was all done with the intent to piss off Firefox users, because wheel-clicking on the Open option doesn’t do anything, and choosing Open in new window defies Firefox’s force new window links in a new tab option and instead really opens a new window. So you’re left with the Copy link option, so you can go the clunkiest route possible — copy link, open new tab, paste URL in location bar, click Go button. By the time I’ve gone through those options, I’ve lost interest. So I generally ignore the Spotlight box. In turn, I generally ignore ESPN.com.