Before I go to the forums, I always like to read any new articles featured on the home page that might interest me. I find it very off-putting when a few ads pop up to cover up the text while I am trying to read the article. I started to read the article on the Webby Awards today, and didn’t get past the first sentence when two ads for Adobe CS5 popped up and covered up the first couple paragraphs of the article…and no way to close them! Can you just get rid of these extra ads, and stick to the ones on the side please.
That happens to me every now and then. That’s when I temporarily disable CSS. I think the problem is usually when a page is designed for larger viewports, but in any case, no CSS has always worked so far. An “uglier” page perhaps, but at least it’s usable.
Javascript does nothing useful or necessary on Sitepoint, so I’ve generally avoided this problem by simply not allowing scripts. Any ads who are actually on the page show just fine, but nothing can “pop” over on top of my page.
The author boxes on articles however seem to be floated, and depending on if there are any graphs or charts before the text and if the browser width is a certain size, the author boxes can and will cover the graph/chart/image/whatever.
I agree that on occasion the ad’s can be distracting and obtrusive, my recommendation would be to hit the print button at the top of the article, it’ll send you to a printer friendly version of the articles free of all the junk and clutter. Hope that helps your frustration a bit (we don’t have any control over the main site) 
Thanks, I’ll try that. Today, there were two CS5 ads, one on top of the other, totally covering up the article … it seems to have been fixed now. But I will definitely try your suggestion, so I can read the rest of the article without it being blocked. Excellent articles, by the way. I am really learning a lot from them.