Hi there,
I’ve been looking into SOLID for awhile now and I had made a small test application in the past, but was kinda turned off by the user experience of setting up a pod. Last night, I had some free time and decided to give it a go again.
One of the main workflows I want to be effortless is having it be very accessible to for non engineer/developer to set up a pod. I currently do not see this happening.
Please let me know if there’s a different workflow for this? Not sure if I"m doing it right.
I created a POD with Inrupt. I see they had their Data Wallet which seemed legit. However, it’s a small install process using git and npm, which I can’t send the average user to.
After I got my POD, I noticed without the “Wallet” I can’t do anything with it, so I connected it to SolidCommunity.net and have been using their “front-end” (I don’t know what the front-end API that connects to your pod is called)? That user experience is just awful though, nothing is really labelled etc. I had a hard time guessing where to add my file to store my data and I work with with kind of stuff every day.
What am I doing wrong? How do I make this a seamless experience for setting up for a user?
I refer to the kind of software you’re referring to as a “Pod Frontend” and there are a number to choose from. The one on solidcommunity.net is called SolidOS and while its UX needs work, it is the work of Tim Berners-Lee and a team intended to test Solid capabilities. While it is an incredibly powerful tool, it is well known that its UX is a problem. An NLnet grant has been obtained specifically to work on the SolidOS UX. While not comprehensive, there is a user guide for SolidOS at GitHub - SolidOS/userguide: User guide for SolidOS Databrowser Frontend.
Additionally, there are a number of other frontend softwares that you can use with pods. These are listed at Solid Resources Catalog search for “frontend” . Penny, for example, is widely used and, while nowhere near as powerful as SolidOS, does have a much cleaner user interface. PodOS is another option with a very clean interface and is built using the same libraries as SolidOS.
Hi @jeffz ,
Thank you so much for the response and I apologize for my delay. In a work sprint currently.
The user guide on GitHub is a great resource. I was unable to find that on my own.
Personally, I’ve been keeping an eye on this project since about 2021 when I first learned of it.
I think this is the time to really push for Solid Pod usage. I think momentum could grow behind it by launching small and free applications with low computing overhead, but the UX and setup would turn any non-technical individual away.
This currently is a product built for developers, not users.
I’ll take a look into Penny. I hope it might be a little more accessible.