Replacing network-offline (old version 2xmonitor) with NM wlan 0% signal strength icon

[Mat Tomaszewski]

Andrew Barbaccia wrote:
>
>     The challenge that we're facing is:
>
>     - we have at least 3 types of network connections that should be
>     represented by the appropriate icon:
>     1. Wireless
>     2. Wired
>     3. 3G
>
>     Each of these has potentially 4 different states:
>
>     - card present, but switched off
>     - card present, but no connection
>     - connecting
>     - connection established (w/various signal strenghts for wireless
>     and 3G)
>
>     any help/suggestions are most welcome.
>
>
> Here are my suggestions:
>
> - The "connecting" icon is the same swirling circles for all 
> connection types.
> - The connection strength for wireless and 3G could be the current 
> "bars" icon but with a 3G bubble in the corner. If that's too small 
>  then possibly different color bars would be sufficient? 
>
> I believe that "switched off" is a subset of "no connection", so I 
> would use something like this:
> - Empty bars icon with a slash through it. When the user clicks to 
> connect to a network, it should show: "Wireless radio switched off" or 
> "No wireless connections found" or a list of available networks to 
> connect to. 
>
> I think it would be useful for the community to voice a few sets of 
> options so Mat can discuss with OEMs and maybe present a solution that 
> works for both.
>
Thanks for these suggestions Andrew, some good ideas there.
Few questions:
- why not show separate icons for all connection types in the panel?
- could we merge the "connecting" animation with the actual icon?
- how should the N-M menu behave if there are 2 types of connection 
active at the same time?

Speaking about OEMs - I'm not directly responsible for cooperation with 
the OEMs, but to be honest, it's usually us coming to them with good 
ideas and them getting excited about it, rather than the other way round 
:) We're trying to use their expertise in UI design and user research to 
the benefit of all Ubuntu users.

M.