Personalizing your workspace

Your workspace has three related surfaces: Your Settings is where you maintain your account details, Profile is where you view a person's information and articles, and Favorited Articles is the profile view for articles that person has favorited.

Result: You can choose the surface that matches the account or article task you want to complete.

Before you start

Prerequisites

• Sign in before opening Your Settings; the surface requires authentication.
• Have the values ready for the fields in the following table.

Result: You have signed in and have the account values needed for the Settings fields.

Find your settings and profile

1. Open the surface that matches your task.

   If you need to…	Open or select…
   Change account details	Your Settings
   View a person's profile	The profile for that username
   View that person's favorited articles	Favorited Articles

Result: You are on the Settings surface, a profile, or that profile's Favorited Articles view.

Understand the surfaces

The Settings surface contains five account fields, an update action, and a logout action. A profile contains the person's picture, username, biography, article tabs, and a profile action whose label depends on whose profile you opened.

When a profile is loading, it displays Loading profile.... When loading ends in an error, it displays This profile could not be loaded. Please try again later.. When you select Favorited Articles, the article list uses that username as its favorites filter. On the profile's article view, the article list uses that username as its author filter.

Result: You can identify the fields, tabs, messages, and profile action available on the surface you opened.

Update your settings

Change the account details shown on your profile from Your Settings.

Prerequisites

• You are signed in.
• You know which account values you want to change.

Steps

1. Open Your Settings.

2. Review or change the fields in the form.

   If you need to change…	Enter the value in…
   Your profile picture	URL of profile picture
   Your displayed name	Your username
   Your biography	Short bio about you
   Your account email	Email
   Your password	Password

3. Select Update Settings.

4. Review the profile page.

Result: A successful update clears the current validation list and opens the profile for the username you submitted. If the service returns validation errors, the Settings surface displays the returned field and message values in a validation list.

View your profile and favorited articles

Use the profile to view a person's identity details and article lists. My Articles lists articles associated with the profile's username; Favorited Articles lists articles that username has favorited.

Prerequisites

• You have a profile username to open.

Steps

1. Open the profile for the username you want to view.

2. Check the profile username and biography to confirm that you opened the intended profile.

3. Select the tab that matches what you want to view.

   If you want to view…	Select…
   Articles associated with the profile	My Articles
   Articles favorited by the profile	Favorited Articles

Result: The selected tab is active, and the article list shows the corresponding author or favorites view. The list is configured for five articles per page.

Handle profile branches and errors

The profile surface chooses what you can do from the profile state and whose profile you opened.

Selecting the follow or unfollow action updates the profile when the operation succeeds. If either operation fails, the profile remains unchanged.

Result: You can distinguish the profile state and choose the available profile action without treating an unavailable branch as another control.

When it goes wrong

Use the message on screen to identify the branch you are in, then take the matching action.

Result: You know which profile message or validation response to act on.

Know what to do next

After a successful Settings update, the profile for the submitted username opens. From there, use My Articles for that profile's articles or Favorited Articles for its favorited articles.

For detailed follow-on tasks, continue to Update your settings, View a profile, Follow an author, or View favorited articles.