Some where in the midst of the early development (1997) and explosion of award programs and today (2010). The web changed and we did not detect, what really changed. Among the changes was the web morphing into one giant worldwide conversation. No longer could anyone resist just sitting there passively.

Another change was the blurred line between a blog and a stand alone web site, which was authored then left for periods of time without any new content. Or review of stale content. Today the front end of once static web site could be a blog. Absent comments or user feed back which in some minds clearly identifies a blog. On the back end are server side tools which permit ease in updating. Relieving the tedious work required for hand coding, uploading a significant number of pages with any or all changes and so forth.

But the most significant change was probably open source. Gone are the days when we had to be just plain geeks or perish in a sea of wanting to do something, but lacked the applications which our mothers could easily use and apply.

Today we can take the very best from an incredible number of choices in web applications-creating our own content management systems. Which literally blend and join what in yester year would have been almost impossible-for the vast majority.

We can also elect or prefer a narrow world or simply venture into new online worlds. Commune with others who wish to make the internet a better place for everyone. No matter what their ability or disABILITY. If we do venture, then places like Face Book and blogs become much more than grousing or bits about our personal lives. Because together we can make the internet a better place for everyone.

The full power of Blogging tools is not evident in this web page. The term content management system or CMS was espoused which separated content from the presentation.  By among others,  Pei-Yuan Wei, author of the ViolaWWW-famed for being the browser that introduced the concept of applets, three years before the inception of Java-posted his own stylesheet proposal on October 22, 1993. CSS of course separated content from style.  But browsers had a lot a catching up to do.  Before harnessing the full power of CSS.

Blogging tools lowers the entry level requirements for participants to almost zero.  Well almost because a basic knowledge of HTML, CMS, My SQL, Apache, PHP (to mention a few knowledge requirements) is essential.  But never fear because a vast army of bloggers share their knowledge.  With very easy tutorials, video's and cordial exchange's.

Finally it is remarkably easy to fix broken parts of a blog, compared to the often tedious task of maintaining a web site. Which in turn provides a group of world citizens-our elderly, an opportunity to share their knowledge.  Which if not shared will be lost forever.  Think too about the positive benefits or having a feeling of self-worth, pride and accomplishment. 

Happy Blogging dear reader!

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If you have been following Smashing Magazine for a while you know that we love high-quality freebies. Over the last years we've featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free-among other things we presented high-quality free fonts, free Wordpress themes, free wallpapers and, of course, free icons. You can find many of them in our section Freebies.

Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.

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