FAQ

Updated 2001.01.20

Where’s your client or project list?

Ah, but we are mere straplings in this business. We’re looking for our first client. (While other nascent consultancies would try to hide this fact, we prefer to tell it like it is.)

What kind of clients are you looking for?

Clients who want to do something different; clients who are self-aware enough to know they don’t know enough about the Web to do a good job; clients who can take our cheeky sense of humour.

Your site is a little... austere. And what’s up with the colours?

We’re torn about this. We go back 20 years in graphic design. We deny outright that form follows function; the two are inseparable, as we have written elsewhere. But we believe in universal compatibility and simplicity. Our page work on any browser that understands tables, and nearly everything is written as valid HTML 4.0. We don’t have left-hand navigation, a back end (see below), sexy JavaScript. It’s vaguely rudimentary. But it works in every browser, and lets you customize your typographic view as much as you wish. ¶ As for the colour scheme: We’ve altered it twice after multiple complaints. The hues are, in fact, too subdued and conservative for our liking, but we’ve made accommodations. We hope you will, too. (Some pages still display older colour schemes. That may remain.)

Why do your pages look so bad in Netscape?

They don’t – not really, and even then only in Netscape 4, which cannot interpret valid HTML and stylesheets correctly. Starting in 2001, we no longer bother with workarounds to get things to look nicey-dicey in that cœlecanth of a browser. For every platform on which Netscape 4 functions, you have perfectly usable standards-compliant alternatives: Explorer, Netscape 6, Mozilla, iCab, Opera.

Why don’t you use a content-management system on your site?

Until recently, there wasn’t enough content to justify anything other than hand-coding and -manipulation. With more than 100 articles in the archives of the NUblog, however, that time has now come. We are working on an open-sourced CMS. (Do you know about our content-management mailing list and content resources?)

What are some of your specialties?

First and foremost, we provide new content ideas, as our Services page explains. Other functions we provide: Rewriting Web sites for accessibility and multilingual access; community-building; photography and illustration.

If you’re so opinionated, what makes you a good choice for a professional client?

Precisely because we are opinionated. We tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. Remember, you come to us to do something new in online content (or at least to apply existing techniques in new ways).

What’s your professional background?

contenu.nu principal Joe Clark is a journalist of ten year’s standing (read some of his articles). Online for nine years, he’s written, programmed from scratch, and designed Web sites since 1995. Twenty years’ experience in the field of accessibility and graphic design and typography. Degree in linguistics (and a diploma in engineering).

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