networkmanagement plasmoid

[Aaron J. Seigo]

Hi Lukas and Jan,

On Thursday, March 28, 2013 12:52:24 Lukáš Tinkl wrote:
> we didn't initially think we could get
> it in a usable state in such a short time ;)

QML can be like that :)

Lamarque is/was involved with this decision as well?

> The current implementation uses only the new libnm-qt and libmm-qt (thin
> wrappers around NM and MM libraries), making it far easier to add
> features or simply keep pace with upstream NM/MM development.

Does this also mean that systems without NetworkManager are not going to be 
supported?

I don't know if people are still using wicd and similar very widely. At least 
we seem to have been able to get away from having to support connman for 
devices, which is nice.

> On the other hand, we definitely intend to reuse existing plasmoid's
> code where it makes sense (VPN plugins, mobile broadband wizard, etc).
> 
> So here we are, the code is in the plasma-nm git repo, we're looking
> forward to your input :)

There is some input I could offer right away (see below), but it's difficult to 
offer more right now without knowing what the design direction is.

For instance, I'm unsure:

* why there are long progress bars under each name while there is a static 
icon to the left that also visualizes a signal.

* if the connection icons to the right are intended to be the only mechanism 
to connect/disconnect

* which wireless routers you plan on showing in the menu by default. 
currently, all visible APs are shown (without sorting by name), but that could 
be just due to being in the early stages of development, or that could also be 
the intended result for final release. It's unclear if often used connections 
will be shown at the top, or if they will always be shown in the list with 
everything else that is visible. right now my machine can see 15 different APs, 
and that's not even a big number ...

.. and similar. :) So anything you can provide as to the intended workflow 
would be very helpful as a starting point.


Things I can observe right away:

* The list of items goes under the translucent status bar at the bottom of the 
window. This looks very messy and makes it hard to see what's going on. Might 
be better to make the status bar opaque .. or have you tried that already?

* Mouse events go through the status bar to the item underneath .. so clicking 
just to the right or left of "Connected" will open the details for the item 
shown under it.

* In the metadata.desktop the description is reeeaaally long (making it 
unusable in the system tray dialog) and includes lots of jargon. Would you 
mind if I just went in there and cleaned it up according to our usual 
guidelines?

* When the popup closes, the UI does not reset .. so when I close and later 
re-open the popup instead of being at the starting point, I'm where ever I was 
when I last used it.

* why is there a makedata.desktop.cmake?


Topics for discussions regarding integration with existing systems to make for 
an acceptable upgrade experience:

* This plasmoid needs to work flawlessly with touch as well as mouse/keyboard. 
Fortunately, we can provide touch customizations of QML and Javascript files in 
the package (by placing such things in platformcontents/touch/ where they will 
override what is in contents/). Main issues here will revolve around the size 
of active press areas: the connection buttons, the configure buttons. This 
could easily be addressed by making some tweaks such as: an easily pressable 
button that appears in the details area for connecting/disconnecting, and 
making it so that pressing anywhere on the status bar opens up the 
configuration options area.

* The name of the component must end up being the same as the current nm 
plasmoid, otherwise we will need to ship an update script and that seems 
unecessary.

* The usage graphs are not implemented in the new widget; seems they would fit 
in very nicely in the details widget though?


Topics for discussion regarding on how we can improve over the old plasmoid:

* When connecting to a new wifi access point, it throws up the big scary full 
configuration dialog when all one needs 99% of the time is to put in a 
password. Being able to jump from a simple password dialog to the full dialog 
would obviously be needed .. but would probably increase user friendlineses a 
lot

* On touch devices, the dialogs which are perfect for managing connections 
with the mouse and keyboard are not so perfect. :) Have you thought about ways 
to allow form-factor specific UI for the connection management UI? We'd 
probably want to do this in QML as well .. and we can tell what the current 
runtime environment is from KDeclarative easily enough .. so we just need 
integration points in the new code to swap between different connection 
management UIs (though using the same backend code one hopes ...)

* The current plasmoid shows a not-so-helpful "map" view when it scans for new 
access points, and this is available only from the Add connection drop down. 
If this could be streamlined and made simpler, it would be great.

* Activity awareness?


What I really like already:

* What is there right now is clean and simple. Hooray for increased elegance.

* What is there generally seems to work

For whatever reason, I can't actually add or edit anything that is shown, but 
I'm guessing that's a problem with my local installation / configuration. If 
you have any hints as to how to unlock that achievement, I'd appreciate it. 
(I'm running nm 0.9.8 fwiw)

Thanks for your work on this .. I hope I haven't deluged you with feedback 
here :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/attachments/20130328/7e1fefa7/attachment.sig>