English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

What my group originally decided on was to do a white paper on was wireless network security. My research in the situation was going to be on WEP/WPA key protection. I believe that the type of research that I would most need is the technical data about how effective this key protection would be and how it compares to other variants of security. We are however changing course since the solution the wireless security could include all the options we were thinking and it was not a necessity to pick from our choices as a white paper usually implies.

This week the group all got introduced via email. We decided that we are going to be using Google Docs in order to share our documents. We also divided up the work load of group activity reports. Since there are four weeks we each took one. I took week fifteen. We also discussed and came up with the topic of wireless security for our white paper subject. As part of my work for the proposal I looked up six different possible sources for our research. All of my sources were on the internet.

This week’s reading is about white papers. From what I have read, it seems to me like the most important part of making a white paper is the research. Although objectivity seems to recently be less of a primary goal, the sustaining idea is that white papers are supposed to present the facts. The writer is trying to present all available choices with the pros and cons to their audience so that they can have a fair look at all options.

As a quick note, the screen captures that are of the entire screen are mostly for frame of reference in the instructions so being able to read the words on the screen is not essential although I will keep tweaking to try and get a better screen capture.

The reading in the TCT this week makes me feel nostalgic. All the editing marks and proper editing procedures truly reminded me of elementary school when I first learned them. I had no idea that they would be staying with me this long and apply to so many things in life. Also, the reading from this weeks Instructor blog surprised me when it said “how long it took to break into the corporate mainstream.” It’s hard to imagine a better way to improve your product than to actually make it more usable. Nowadays making products more usable is a big industry itself (like tech support, for instance).

Thumbnails blue for headers/steps and black for the text within the headers/steps. The headers/steps are "Univers" font and the body/figure text uses "Consolas". Dimensions of the novice instructions are 11 in H x 5.25 in W for the beginner to best align with the graphics and be able to free up monitor space so you can reference the instructions while performing the action on the same monitor. The expert instructions are 11 in H x 6.25 in W for less need of graphics and because it is not meant to be referenced back and forth from the process as much.

What stuck out the most to me in this weeks reading was part of the article "Whitespace" from A List Apart (sited in Instructor Blog #5: Design). In the middle of the article it shows how the use of whitespace made a face mask product go from looking cheap to luxurious. I was struck by how effective it was to make the ad look less cheap by just changing the font and amount of space on the photo without altering the photo itself or any of the words in the ad. This spoke volumes to me about how important it is that we keep in mind our own culture and how we perceive visual images.

-For my instructions I plan to describe how to download and use torrent software. The instructions will be using the free software known as µTorrent for the downloading program and the website http://btjunkie.org as the source for torrent files.