English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week our group spent most of its time using and researching the three different browsers (Opera, Firefox, IE) and our audience. We are becoming familiar with all of the browsers and starting to see the real benefits of each, when compared on the same scale. We all have favorite features with each browser, but our research is still focused on the point of which would be the preferred browser for an IT specialist/department. As a group we are beginning to focus in on the main features we want to highlight and compare. Security, ease of navigation (favorites, speed dial, etc), and hardware/software support are a few examples of what we are focusing on.

We will continue researching through this weekend, digging deeper into what and IT person wants in a browser and what key features really stick out to them. Once this is complete we will have a good sense of how to represent each browser and what specific facts (features) matter to our audience, not just the people doing the research. This should allow us to begin writing on either Sunday or Monday.

Each group member has been posting their research logs on Google Doc so we all have access to everyone’s research, this will make it much easier during the writing process. The links we are using have also been put into a separate document so we don’t have to search for them again. Like TH says, do the citations when you find the information, anything to make our lives easier. I think overall we have established a good way to organize all of our information and it should really help the writing process go quickly.

Lastly, we have critiqued each others thumbnail samples and we will be picking the format we want to run with. This will be discussed in our meeting on Sunday and should get us in line to begin writing the rough draft of our white paper. I would say that we are keeping on track and the communication throughout the group has been very good. This should make the final steps of the project go smoothly.