Fwd: nm-applet : Notification Area or Panel Applet ?

[thibaut bethune]

1°) Jerone Young said "This nm-applet is also for configuration
changes. So while you may
have a staic ip you may want to change it. Or maybe you decide to
start using DHCP. This will allow you to easily see your ip address"

Actually you can have that configuration thing with an applet : see
Tomboy applet or Glipper applet which can easily be accessed since it
remains on the panel (but not in the notification area)
look at this picture
http://bp3.blogger.com/_TWgeucLxjj0/R-UzbI4sA0I/AAAAAAAAA1Q/8BIbhavAlxo/s1600-h/fricorder.png
: Tomboy applet is always visible as an applet (top right of the
screen), not in notification area

2°)  Jerone Young said "I actually think it makes since and eases
network configuration for everyone"

You can say that for everything and then place all programs in
notification area i guess. Maybe that should therefore be renamed into
the "configuration area" ;-)

nm-applet is an applet and notification area is for notification.
Therefore the "bug" seems pretty obvious to me.

Please, read again that HIG quote "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."
That seems to be a good principle to me.

Besides, the problem not only concerns nm-applet, it concerns the
whole system. If nm-applet starts to stuck in notification area, all
programs will do the same. I guess this is why HIG stand for

Thank you


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: thibaut bethune <thibaut.bethune at gmail.com>
Date: 22 mars 2008 04:48
Subject: nm-applet : Notification Area or Panel Applet ?
To: ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com


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