Re: Online Status Design + Program Input

[Martin Owens <doctormo gmail com>]

On Fri, 2009-12-04 at 18:09 +1300, Simon Geard wrote:
> No. No, it's not. Not when software uses that information to change it's
> behavior. Like Firefox, which used to go into offline mode when NM said
> there wasn't a network connection, denying me access to my local web
> server. Or IM clients going offline because no internet connection is
> available.
> 
> Much better to falsely report a working connection than to tell the user
> and their applications that they can't access the internet when they
> really can.

That's a completely different use case. What you want to tell client
programs needs to be different to what your telling users when your
unsure about what you've got.

Firefox for instance should never deny you access to local networks just
because it goes into offline mode. Checking for any network settings was
a bad idea and still is.

Other programs have a choice.

Although this conflict has just made me think of an interesting idea.

What if we instead of testing for connectivity ourselves, simply allow
programs to report to networkmanager that they can't connect (specify
protocol, port, address) and then we could at least do some tests to see
if things have gone wrong and what it was.

If anything we'd just list them out and specify that _something_ is
wrong because some programs aren't getting connected. Anything from IM
client, email client, firefox or update manager.

Thoughts?

Martin,