Re: GUI thoughts: confusing menu with multiple wifi cards

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sun, 2010-04-11 at 05:08 +0100, Richard Neill wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I've used NM a bit with a machine which has multiple network cards, and 
> I thought I'd attach the following screenshot. I think that the layout 
> is rather confusing, and perhaps could be improved.
> 
> I think it's confusing because the horizontal rules appear to take 
> visual precedence over the slightly less-indented headings. Thus it 
> seems to be divided into 5 sections:

Yeah, the multi-card case is somewhat special.  But in this case, you
almost always dont' want both cards to connect to the same thing, so you
need to control the separately.

Second, as you've seen, both cards don't necessarily see the same APs.
Your iwl3945 is a/b/g, while your p54 is just b/g.  Thus we simply
shouldn't show any APs under the p54 card that are in the 5GHz band,
because the p54 can't connect to them.

Same goes for encryption capabilities, some older cards can't do
AES/CCMP, so we shouldn't show any APs for those cards that are only
WPA2 capable.

We've got various ideas for redoing the menu into a more flexible format
[1], but not a lot of time to commit to that yet.  But it's been clear
for a while that we need to focus on the UI more, since the current UI
is no longer fulfilling all the needs people have of it.

Dan

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2009/05/26/face-transplants-are-the-new-botox/

> 
> 
> 1. Wired Network,Disconnected, Wireless Networks (IntelPro), Mobile, 
> Disconnect
> 
> <hr>
> 
> 2. Mobile-Eapsim, Wireless Networks (Intersil), disconnected.
> 
> <hr>
> 
> 3. Mobile, Mobile EAPSIM
> 
> <hr>
> 
> 4. VPN connections
> 
> <hr>
> 
> 5. Connect to Hidden, Connect to New
> 
> 
> If there is only one WiFi card, it's far less confusing. However the 
> screenshot attached could, imho, be much improved by a better layout.
> 
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> P.S. I seem not to be thinking very clearly - I was going to add this 
> comment as a post-script to my previous message; it then occurred to me 
> that it would be clearer in a separate thread, but added the 
> (irrelevant) attachment to the last message too - sorry for the confusion!
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