On May 17 I received an e-mail from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance group titled "Customer Security Assurance Notice." Unfortunately, it was mainly HTML code. Here's a sample, which began the e-mail's content:
(Hopefully, someone at Comcast didn't send this intentionally.)
Further down the e-mail it stated that Comcast had blocked my ability to send outgoing e-mails because "Comcast has determined that your computer(s) have been used to send unsolicited email."I called Comcast seeking an explanation as I've never sent anyone unsolicited e-mail. The customer service person with whom I spoke told me that I had to contact their security department and gave me its number. I called it. An answering machine responded. I left a message and my phone number.The next day someone from Comcast's security department called. He told me that I hadn't sent anyone unsolicited e-mail and that Comcast had sent the notice to all its Internet customers. He told me that to restore my ability to send e-mail I either had to call 1-800-comcast or go to comcast.net/help/faq/tb25, which would explain what I would have to do. Why he couldn't explain it to me while I had him on the phone befuddled me.I went to its Web site, which only offered explanations for Outlook Express 2002 and 2003: I had Outlook Express 6. Eventually, I figured out how to apply the fix to my Outlook.However, because of this experience, my first award for lousy customer service goes to Comcast, first for sending me an e-mail in HTML code that did such a poor job of explaining the problem and then for its security person's failure to help me to correct the problem while he was on the phone with me.
Today I encountered a Web page that was difficult to read. It's at http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/csshover.html. It's difficult to read because it contains white text in a smallish font size on a medium blue background that also contains a distracting graphic. After reading only a few lines I stopped. The lack of contrast combined with the distracting background made it impossible for me to easily read it. And though the content seemed interesting, it wasn't worth further effort.
- When designing a Web page, think readability.
- For the best contrast, place black text on a white background.
- Don't lessen your text's readability by placing a distracting background behind it.
- Use a sans-serif font, such as Verdana.
- Don't skimp on point size. Unlike magazines whose printing costs increase with the number of pages, you (usually) don't incur that cost on the Web.
- And don't place style over substance. Content is king! (Or queen if you're a lady.)
It was fairly easy to integrate this blog into my Website. I just had to change some settings in Blogger and copy the template it generated into the right place on my HTML page. I found the basic directions that pointed me in the right direction in Ian Lloyd's book, Build You Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS. It has an entire chapter devoted to the topic called "Adding a Blog to Your Web Site."
Once I got the blog to appear on my site, I encountered a sticky problem that took me several days to solve. Each post contains a title, its content, and a comment line. Unexpectedly, my content was too far to the left. I checked Blogger's Knowledge Base, but couldn't find any information on how to correct the problem. Nor did a post I placed in Blogger's community provide me with a solution. But, despite increasing frustration, I persisted.
It turned out to be easier to solve than I expected once I pointed myself in the right direction. I was able to do that after viewing the source code for the Web page containing my blog. I noticed that my content appeared with a CSS class called "post-body." Once I discovered that, the solution was within reach without much stretching. All I had to do was to increase post-body's left margin. Of course, if I didn't know anything about CSS I'd have been unable to solve my problem. It seems that CSS is something that everyone who's responsible for either designing or maintaining all or part of a Web site would benefit from knowing.
