English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Up to this point, our activities have been mostly collaboratory.

We were all a part of the initial back-and-forth e-mail exchange. We introduced ourselves, started a brainstorm, started thinking about project roles and set up a meeting for Thursday night. During the meeting we chose our topic, discussed and chose project roles, assigned activities for the end of the week and the weekend, and set up our next meeting. Everyone was active in the meeting, too.

I'm one of the many in this class to whom "white paper" is a new term. I think the only times I've read or heard about "white papers" were in blog posts and/or comments earlier in the semester in this course.

It's more of a link re-iteration than a final draft (a pdf version is pretty much out of the question): voila!

I've determined that IE is totally lame and doesn't correctly follow the image viewport width rules in HTML, and I'm no expert, so I'm still tweaking a separate set for IE that emulates what I WANT the page to do but isn't quite the same. Again, Mozilla Firefox (superior and free!) provides better viewing.

Links to both my instructions manuals can be found by following the link, here.

Like Instructor Blog #6 says, the concept of usability is intuitive. Something that's really frustration is trying to use a product or process that is poorly designed and unnecessarily hard to use. However, the blog continues by saying it's easy as a designer or writer to lose sight of usability, which is why attention to usability on this project is important.

Included are pdfs containing:

• My novice thumnail
• A rough outline for the HTML frame structure for the novice thumbnail
• My advanced thumbnail
• My sample graphics

When I began looking the Thompson Handbook after reading Instructor Blog #5: Design, I couldn't help but begin to analyze the text using some of the qualities of design mentioned in the blog.

With my instruction project, I want to focus on two perspectives on Excel.

Most workplaces use Excel in some way. Still, while most Excel users understand how to use basic spreadsheet functions like sums and averages, the most powerful functions are far from common knowledge. Outside the workplace, Excel is often seen as a confusing program or a yawnfest. However, Excel spreadsheets can be a big help for individuals, too, if used correctly. Spreadsheets tend to be good for managing personal finances, serving as tools that organize weekly budgets or plan the payment of owed money, for example.

While I was reading through the material for this week, I mostly tried to relate by thinking about how I use instructions and what what I look for.