Re: Network properties / support info

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 27 Aug 2005, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > What are the chances of getting a connection properties dialogue, much
> > like (or completely stolen from) the one in gnome-netstatus?
> 
> Argh, ugh, ick. Okay, thanks to Jan for pointing out the existence of the
> context menu. Two comments:
> 
>  1) The gnome-netstatus dialogue is way cooler.

I'm not sure what it has that Robert's dialog does not, other than the bytes 
sent/received...  The Support tab has the same stuff that the NM Connection Info 
dialog does, while the General tab doesn't seem all that useful for two reasons: 
a) it allows you to pick a device, but NM by design (right now) supports only 
one active device, and b) it shows signal strength, which is what the NM applet 
icon shows.  What specific things were you looking for?

>  2) Does this thing have to have a context menu? :-)

Note that my thinking about the menu layout (and Brian's for that matter) 
isn't set in stone or anything, but we have a few guiding principles for 
starters.  The idea here is that only commonly used things go in the main menu.  
ie, hopefully your network won't be so flaky that you need to talk to a support 
person every day, therefore you don't really need to clutter up the main menu 
with a menu item that you don't actually need.

We've talked about the "Wireless Network Discovery" menu as being completely 
unnecessary going forward, as we can achieve the same results by monitoring 
battery/ac status, backing scans off more aggressively, and blacklisting cards 
that have issues scanning (namely a/b/g combo cards).

So, if the only things left in the context menu are the About item and the 
Connection Information item, it may not make sense to keep the Connection Info 
thing in the right click menu.  If that's the case, we could either make 
gnome-netstatus aware of NetworkManager and remove the connection info stuff 
from the nm applet entirely, or we could move the Connection Info item to the 
main menu.

Dan