Login/profile workflow

[InruptKelly]

I am going to go through the basic login/homepage workflow with the mindframe of an unfamiliar user and try to surface relevant questions.

Step 1
I navigate to kellyo.inrupt.net, which I think of as the location of my Pod. I see this page:

The "Log Out" button in the upper right indicates to me that I'm already logged in. But then why am I looking at the "public homepage of Kelly OBrien"? If I'm logged in as Kelly OBrien, should I be looking at my private homepage or something? When I login to Facebook or LinkedIn, it doesn't show me my public-facing profile first.

Step 2
I'm new to Solid and trying to figure out what I can do with it, so this "Getting started with Solid and Databrowser button" is most appealing to me. ("Profile" and "Inbox" may be interesting at some point, but I know I don't have a profile or any messages yet, so it's not going to be very interesting. I have no idea what "Public Folder" means.)

I've clicked the "Getting started" button and been redirected to this GitHub page: https://github.com/solid/userguide

That's disappointing! I was hoping to explore, click around and play with a few things to see what's up. I'd rather not read a big user manual. Especially since I don't even have anything I specifically want to do yet. I would be open to a quick guided tour via popups that highlight key features though.

Step 3
OK I've backtracked and decided to check out "Profile" instead. I'm at https://kellyo.inrupt.net/profile/card and looking at this:

This is pretty ugly and I don't understand most of it. What's a card? What are all these unfamiliar file types? What's with all the random number strings in the bottom left? Why are things like "type" and "participant" repeated?

Is this where I'm supposed to edit my own profile? Or is this the profile others see when the find my Solid Pod?

Step 4
I hover near the "Card" title at the top and get some icons to appear. I click through a few that only deepen the mystery.

Ah, but the "Edit your profile" button looks promising! Click:

OK great, this is a recognizable page. Looks like there are some basic fields I can use to fill out information about myself. I know I'm on a "public" profile page so I assume anything I type here will be discoverable by other people. (I'm not exactly sure how yet.)

Step 5
Then I scroll down to the bottom of the page and see this:

That sounds cool. I imagine I'll be able to do more interesting things once I'm connect to other people. I can think of a few other people with Solid WebIDs that I'd be happy to be connected with publicly.

But this instruction confuses me: "Drag people onto the target below to add people."

"Drag people"? From where? I have a friend who I know has a Solid Pod too, but I have no idea what his WebID is... Do I have to go track it down somehow? Or am I supposed to be dragging vcf files from my Mac contacts or something?

Step 6
Because I'm extremely industrious and dedicated, I go elsewhere to track down the WebID for my friend Arne: https://megoth.solid.community/profile/card#me

So now I've got his Profile open in another tab on my browser. I try to drag that browser tab into the other tab that has my own profile open to see if I can drop it onto the target icon. No luck.

Aha, after some clicking and hovering, I've realized that I can grab the little ID card icon from Arne's profile page and drag THAT into the other browser tab in order to drop it onto the target.

This seems to work OK, and now it looks like Arne is added to my list of friends. Though his profile photo is broken.

This would be a great time to chat him or something to let him know that we're now connected on Solid, but the only icon I see is a little circle with an arrow that just directs me back to his public profile. So I'm not really sure what we can do together.

[mikeadams1]

You can use the form router app to send a message to his inbox

[jwalton]

Aha, after some clicking and hovering, I've realized that I can grab the little ID card icon from Arne's profile page and drag THAT into the other browser tab in order to drop it onto the target.

I'm still stuck on this step. I go to Arne's profile, I click and drag this icon:

And now I'm friends with an SVG file, which seems like probably not what I wanted:

[jwalton]

Oh, I can drag an <a> tag into the target above that and add my github page to my profile. I figured that out by looking at Arne's profile. Also, looking at Arne's profile, he has friends with correct thumbnails, and if I follow those links I end up at a a /profile/card#me URL... If I drag the link from above in this issue to https://megoth.solid.community/profile/card#me (or if you drag that link) then I seem to correctly end up friends with Arne.