Following references to "the original post" should be interpreted as either David McNab's email "Test Report - Winstaller 0.3.9.2pre" or my subsequent reply.
> Two thoughts... > > 1. What is the sense of "Freenet is running (no gateway)"? If Freenet is > running and fproxy doesn't respond, this is clearly an internal problem. > Shouldn't that be subsumed under "Freenet is having problems"? What? No. A user can choose to not have FProxy. It's a configurable item. Disabling fproxy is not "an error". In the same way that taking "Microsoft Fast Find" out of your Startup folder is not "an error" If you read the original post , you will see that this icon state is to be used in conjunction with the following new proposed behaviour: > o If the user double-clicks hops, and the gateway cannot be > 'seen' by freenet.exe, it reports this with a message box > o If the user right-clicks hops and the gateway cannot be 'seen' > by freenet.exe, it greys out the Open Gateway option This allows the user to freely enable or disable FProxy. They in fact may have a valid reason for doing so. They may also choose to disable automatic FProxy but launch it manually afterwards. Again they in fact may have a valid reason for doing so. The proposed mechanism allows the user this freedom, while also tying in the behaviour to the status reporting (i.e. the icon) and the user interface behaviour (i.e. the behaviour when the icon is double-clicked, and the contents (and effective availability) or the popup menu) > 2. I would think it's pretty annoying to have a flashing icon in the systray > whenever I have Freenet running (e.g. because I have it start automatically > with Windows) and I am not connected the Net (because of metered dial-up, > whatever). Or are users supposed to switch off Freenet when they go offline? > Would be cool if Freenet detected the presense or absense of a net > connection automatically (as, say, ICQ does). What? Er? The argument was that Freenet *would* detect the presence or absence of a net connection automatically. As ICQ does. Did you read the original post? By detecting the presence or absence of a net connection it is able to alert the user, effectively saying "hey dude, you appear to have a freenet node running, but since your net connection is down your node ain't gonna help anyone do anything" Unless by 'Freenet' you meant 'the Freenet node' rather than 'the Freenet systray application for Windows that the original post was talking about' You have a valid point about a flashing icon being annoying... well, the counterargument is simply, if you don't have a reliable net connection then you shouldn't be running a freenet node. Unless you are leeching. I suppose I could do one of two things: 1. Change the icon so that instead of flashing between two different icons, it flashes between the hops icon and the hops-icon-with-a-different-color-background. Less distracting? 2. Link the flashing-icon behaviour to the "transient=yes" flag so that transient nodes do not have flashing icons but 'permanent' nodes would have. Or maybe, depending on the number of votes I get, 3. Make the 'Freenet is running but your net connection is down' state be represented by a new icon, which DOESN'T flash. I don't like this suggestion for all the obvious reasons. However, if the prevaling decision is to do this instead of a flashing icon, then so be it. If we opt for 2) above we get all the benefits of 3) plus a few others. The only reason 2) might be disliked is if idiots running transient nodes set "transient=no" and then complain that they have a flashing icon in their systray whenever they close down their AOL connection. Ya, well. Of course, transient nodes might still want to know that their net connection is down. In which case we might as well opt for 3) after all. A new icon, that shows hops (somehow) and also encapsulates the idea that a network connection to the internet is not available, without flashing or animation of any sort. I'll put my art hat on. Dave _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl at freenetproject.org http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devl
