nm-applet : Notification Area or Panel Applet ?

thibaut bethune thibaut.bethune at gmail.com
Sat Mar 22 03:48:58 UTC 2008


I'm running Hardy beta. Since Ubuntu 7.04 the network manager icon is
stuck in my top panel.

I don't see the interest of having such an icon in notification area
since the icon never changes on my system (but i have no wireless
connection)

Therefore i wander if network manager should not be an applet instead
of cluttering the notification area : actually network manager icon
doesn't notify anything (it acts in a manner quite similar to Tomboy
which is an applet. Besides it is called nm-applet !).

Having network manager as an applet doesn't mean that it can't display
ponctual pieces of information in notification area when needed
(poping up a small transient "balloon" attached to a notification
icon).

for reference, here is the GNOME HIG quote :

"Using the Status Notification Area

Using the status notification area applications can notify the user of
non-critical events (for example, arrival of new email, or a chat
'buddy' having logged on), and expose the status of active system
processes (for example, a printing document, or a laptop's battery
charging).

The utility of the notification area decreases rapidly when more than
about four icons are always present. For this reason, icons that
appear only temporarily in response to events are preferable."

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html




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