It had been a while since I had last blog-walked -- I still blog-surf now and then, though -- and suddenly I decided, well, why the heck not, the night was young (so are Tata and Will) and I was happy. So blog-walk I did.

One thing I immediately noticed: how the trend has shifted in the last couple of years -- yeah, it was that long. You might not realize it if you're an avid blog-walker -- actually, she doesn't seem so avid anymore -- but trust me, it has.

Not long ago, when blogs had just replaced IRC as the next "it" thing, most people didn't really pay much attention to what they wrote. Bad spelling, poor grammar, who cares! Anything goes, anyhow whack.

Yes, every ten clicks or so you came across one who did, but most bloggers seemed to be concerned more with having the most sophisticated design -- layout, so it was known -- and the latest JavaScripts -- most of which didn't even work on my then-fav browser Netscape. Simply put, "good" writers didn't come in abundance then. "Good" web programmers did.

Granted, some of the designs -- layouts -- were sophisticated, indeed, in terms of complexity. I tried mimicking some of them just for the sake of it, but after some finger-spraining exercise attempting to make them work on IE, Netscape, and Opera, I gave up. Most of the people didn't even bother and simply wrote "best viewed with IE." More often than not this meant only IE would work.

And many of the bells and whistles -- mostly done in JavaScripts or Flash -- were awesome: animated pull-down menus, falling snowflakes, bar codes, text around mouse pointer, music player, and a whole lot more. The thing about JavaScript is that people can simply view the page source and copy the code without permission. So some even went as far as encrypting, would you believe it, their pages' source. Now, who says piracy kills creativity?

YMMV, but while the advanced -- at times so advanced that you could hardly read the text -- designs attracted me, it was the writings that kept me coming back. The site owners, of course, have every right to put whatever they like. Just like the readers have every right to love or hate a website. And, as with everything else in this perfectly imperfect world, when different people exercise different rights, they might clash.

K, we're not going there. Not tonight, anyway.

Where was I? Good writers were hard to find. Not anymore, apparently. At least from the few sites I accidentally stepped on, it seems bloggers are putting more thoughts into their writings and less into layouts.

I can only guess that back then only IT-literate people had blogs. And, well, you know how IT guys -- and gals -- are with words. Man, I'm tellin' ya, some people I know can't even write a few proper sentences w/o smileys or abbreviations! ;)

Now it's different. More and more bloggers come from non-IT backgrounds. Or non-science, for that matter. Lawyers. Teachers. Housewives. Actors and actresses *nah, kidding -- not that non*. Even professional journalists and authors.

This is not to say a good blog must mean professional-looking entries with faultless English or whatever. It's just good to have variety. So, keep blogging, you guys.

Oh, BTW. Have I been watching too much Raymond or is the show really that accurate?

Current music: Level 42 - Freedom Someday
Current mood: happy