Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 10:35 +0200, Torsten Spindler wrote: Hello, On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 20:52 +1300, Simon Geard wrote: ... Your link doesn't seem to be publicly accessible - I get You are not allowed to view this page when I click on it... you are right. My wrong for sending out an internal link. I guess the work results will be published some time on the public Ubuntu wiki. Sorry for the mis-information. Would be nice to coordinate designs, however, while they are actually in-progress. I know the GNOME Shell team is also working on a redesign for GNOME 3.0, plus there's the existing design ideas we had from a year or two ago that I blogged about. If there end up being more than one design proposals, it's going to be a lot harder to make any of them happen... Dan ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Wed, 2010-03-31 at 21:35 -0400, Yclept Nemo wrote: ... Furthermore ubuntu just implemented a complete interface redesign after a lengthy evaluation of many individual components and applications. I'm sure you could find someone on one of the ubuntu teams to provide a much more professional design evaluation of nm-applet. Work on a re-design of a network connectivity applet has already been started and some information can be found here: https://wiki.canonical.com/Ubuntu/NetworkMenu I do not know of any schedule that will bring this enhanced network menu on the desktop though. Regards, Torsten ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 09:23 +0200, Torsten Spindler wrote: Work on a re-design of a network connectivity applet has already been started and some information can be found here: https://wiki.canonical.com/Ubuntu/NetworkMenu Your link doesn't seem to be publicly accessible - I get You are not allowed to view this page when I click on it... Simon. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
Hello, On Thu, 2010-04-01 at 20:52 +1300, Simon Geard wrote: ... Your link doesn't seem to be publicly accessible - I get You are not allowed to view this page when I click on it... you are right. My wrong for sending out an internal link. I guess the work results will be published some time on the public Ubuntu wiki. Sorry for the mis-information. Regards, Torsten ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
But most of them do have a more or less technical background. The users I am thinking about are really native end users. Ubuntu has very many users and it's polished easy-to-use interface does not target technical proficiency. The problem is contacting the users - perhaps a survey concerning the design of nm-applet could be held on the ubuntu forums. Furthermore ubuntu just implemented a complete interface redesign after a lengthy evaluation of many individual components and applications. I'm sure you could find someone on one of the ubuntu teams to provide a much more professional design evaluation of nm-applet. Despite the fact that the line is not left-aligned, is not active-colored, and not bold? I also felt that the dividing line was a logical separation between interfaces. However I like the layout and I think a few tweaks can vastly improve the appearance of the current applet. Title - Wired Networks - Wireless Networks . Should strike as the largest, foremost element - Font is not the darkest color - Font is not the largest * The title font is either the same size or smaller than the Available font in the divider. However, the boldness of the title font gives it a squished appearance that makes it look smaller. Divider - Available . Experiment completely discarding the divider, or perhaps replacing it with a larger line spacing between the connected and disconnected networks - no more than a half-space though. - At the very least shrink the Available font and if possible shorten the right spur of the dividing line while maintaining a left-alignment. Disconnect Option . Since the disconnect option is currently placed directly beneath the connected network and not at the bottom of the network interface category (Wireless|Wired) I am given the feeling that this option is connection-specific. After all, it could be possible to have multiple VPN or Wireless? network connections. From this premise I suggest the disconnect option: . Should be a smaller font . Should be indented . Should be demarcated with an indentation decoration, possibly the unicode arrow (U+21AA) or if unicode is unavailable, substituted with a transparent image Network List . Currently the list is two-column: a left-aligned network name and a right aligned image representing wireless network strength. . If the above suggestions do not create a clear enough distinction between connected and disconnected networks, consider replacing with a three-columned list: - left-aligned bullet/asterisk signifying connected networks. Left-aligned network name. Right-aligned network icon. VPN connections . I have yet to create VPNs through network manager, but once I created I assume they would be given a ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
Obviously, I hadn't finished: VPN connections . I have yet to create VPNs through network manager, but once created I assume they would be given a a title-area on the same logical level as the Wired and Wireless network areas. This is why I recommend the full horizontal rule be saved until the very bottom of the applet popup-menu to demarcate special (top-level) logical sections such as VPN Connections and Connect to Hidden Wireless Network(s?)... Other Sections (Optional radical modification) - VPN Connections - Create New Wireless Network . Create a new title-area of the same level as the Wired and Wireless network areas with the name Create networks . Append two children to this new area: Create New VPN Connection and Create New Wireless Network Network List HG suggests completely replacing the network list workflow with clickable bullets thereby removing the need for the disconnect button. This is an equally valid suggestion and also more succinct. ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 20:42 +0100, Hans-Gerd van Schelve wrote: On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:40:29 -0700, Dan Williams d...@redhat.com wrote: On Fri, 2010-03-19 at 21:23 +0100, Hans-Gerd van Schelve wrote: On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:50:03 +0100, van Schelve pub...@van-schelve.de wrote: On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:55:35 -0800, Dan Williams d...@redhat.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 13:24 +0100, van Schelve wrote: We are planning to rollout NM 0.8 to a very! big number of mobile Linux systems. Our different usecases for NM are Ethernet, 3G datacards, bluetooth based 3g and in small numbers wlan as well. Today we had a discussion about nm-applet in our companay. We are worried about our user get overcharge with the usability of nm-applet. The biggest painpoint we talked about in this context is way nm presents the available devices, available connections and the active connections. The horizontal separator should be removed from nm-applet. It looks like a logical separator between different connection types. Hmm, the indentation was supposed to help make that clearer. The problem is that we do need a mechanism to distinguish between the current network connection for that device and it's associated actions (like disconnect) and the other available connections. Unfortunately we're currently stuck in a GtkMenu widget where we can't control the layout in a fine-grained manner without violating a lot of UI principles (since it is still a menu). Maybe it could be a way using differnt font size / weight? Or maybe indenting blockwise? It might work to make the available text in the line smaller perhaps to differentiate it more from the surrounding text? What do you think about presenting the list in this way: One additional thing I thought about could be a disconnect entry in each section Right, but now you're getting dangeriously close to what we already have :) When you start adding a Disconnect option, you then need to physically separate that disconnect option somehow from the rest of the available connections, because Disconnect isn't a connection and thus shouldn't be grouped with the other connections unless there's some visible separation. I don't think so. We discussed this once again. The disconnect option must be in the group because it is directly affected to the one open connection in this group. The line implicate a logical breakup. I tested this with a small number of colleagues that never have seen nm-applet. They all told me the same. They are confused about active connections, available connections and their first impression was that a line is a separation between two devices. Despite the fact that the line is not left-aligned, is not active-colored, and not bold? Dan Would simply making the - Available - text a bit smaller suffice to reduce the open space? Dan Hans-Gerd - Wired Network [ ] Auto eth0 (100Mit FD) disconnect from this device - Mobile Broadband [x] MyCompany disconnect from this device - Nokia 6680 (Bluetooth) [ ] MyCompany disconnect from this device - Wireless Network [x] Foobar (83%) [ ] blahfasel (60%) [ ] muckebock (50%) Connect to Hidden Wireless Network Create New Wireless Network disconnect from this device - VPN [ ] MyCompany (openvpn) [ ] @Home (vpnc) disconnect vpn The user is able to activate or deactivate a connection by clicking into a checkbox, or even better using a radio button because you can only have one active connection for each physical device. The horizonal rules are not really necessary but I thought you like them ;-) Are there currently any plans to polish the nm-applet? Mainly plans to stop using a GtkMenu widget entirely and move to a more freeform widget. That's not in-progress yet though. Until then we can certainly discuss ways to make the current menu-based approach better, especially if we find that users are confused with it. We should have a lot better data on the new applet too given that both Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 shipped with it. You are right. The user will give response. But most of them do have a more or less technical background. The users I am thinking about are really native end users. They know their business application (more or less). They know the difference between eMail and a letter. That's it. My problem is that I have thousands of them ;-) HG Dan ___ NetworkManager-list mailing
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Fri, 2010-03-19 at 21:23 +0100, Hans-Gerd van Schelve wrote: On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:50:03 +0100, van Schelve pub...@van-schelve.de wrote: On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:55:35 -0800, Dan Williams d...@redhat.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 13:24 +0100, van Schelve wrote: We are planning to rollout NM 0.8 to a very! big number of mobile Linux systems. Our different usecases for NM are Ethernet, 3G datacards, bluetooth based 3g and in small numbers wlan as well. Today we had a discussion about nm-applet in our companay. We are worried about our user get overcharge with the usability of nm-applet. The biggest painpoint we talked about in this context is way nm presents the available devices, available connections and the active connections. The horizontal separator should be removed from nm-applet. It looks like a logical separator between different connection types. Hmm, the indentation was supposed to help make that clearer. The problem is that we do need a mechanism to distinguish between the current network connection for that device and it's associated actions (like disconnect) and the other available connections. Unfortunately we're currently stuck in a GtkMenu widget where we can't control the layout in a fine-grained manner without violating a lot of UI principles (since it is still a menu). Maybe it could be a way using differnt font size / weight? Or maybe indenting blockwise? It might work to make the available text in the line smaller perhaps to differentiate it more from the surrounding text? What do you think about presenting the list in this way: One additional thing I thought about could be a disconnect entry in each section Right, but now you're getting dangeriously close to what we already have :) When you start adding a Disconnect option, you then need to physically separate that disconnect option somehow from the rest of the available connections, because Disconnect isn't a connection and thus shouldn't be grouped with the other connections unless there's some visible separation. Would simply making the - Available - text a bit smaller suffice to reduce the open space? Dan - Wired Network [ ] Auto eth0 (100Mit FD) disconnect from this device - Mobile Broadband [x] MyCompany disconnect from this device - Nokia 6680 (Bluetooth) [ ] MyCompany disconnect from this device - Wireless Network [x] Foobar (83%) [ ] blahfasel (60%) [ ] muckebock (50%) Connect to Hidden Wireless Network Create New Wireless Network disconnect from this device - VPN [ ] MyCompany (openvpn) [ ] @Home (vpnc) disconnect vpn The user is able to activate or deactivate a connection by clicking into a checkbox, or even better using a radio button because you can only have one active connection for each physical device. The horizonal rules are not really necessary but I thought you like them ;-) Are there currently any plans to polish the nm-applet? Mainly plans to stop using a GtkMenu widget entirely and move to a more freeform widget. That's not in-progress yet though. Until then we can certainly discuss ways to make the current menu-based approach better, especially if we find that users are confused with it. We should have a lot better data on the new applet too given that both Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 shipped with it. You are right. The user will give response. But most of them do have a more or less technical background. The users I am thinking about are really native end users. They know their business application (more or less). They know the difference between eMail and a letter. That's it. My problem is that I have thousands of them ;-) HG Dan ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:50:03 +0100, van Schelve pub...@van-schelve.de wrote: On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:55:35 -0800, Dan Williams d...@redhat.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 13:24 +0100, van Schelve wrote: We are planning to rollout NM 0.8 to a very! big number of mobile Linux systems. Our different usecases for NM are Ethernet, 3G datacards, bluetooth based 3g and in small numbers wlan as well. Today we had a discussion about nm-applet in our companay. We are worried about our user get overcharge with the usability of nm-applet. The biggest painpoint we talked about in this context is way nm presents the available devices, available connections and the active connections. The horizontal separator should be removed from nm-applet. It looks like a logical separator between different connection types. Hmm, the indentation was supposed to help make that clearer. The problem is that we do need a mechanism to distinguish between the current network connection for that device and it's associated actions (like disconnect) and the other available connections. Unfortunately we're currently stuck in a GtkMenu widget where we can't control the layout in a fine-grained manner without violating a lot of UI principles (since it is still a menu). Maybe it could be a way using differnt font size / weight? Or maybe indenting blockwise? It might work to make the available text in the line smaller perhaps to differentiate it more from the surrounding text? What do you think about presenting the list in this way: One additional thing I thought about could be a disconnect entry in each section - Wired Network [ ] Auto eth0 (100Mit FD) disconnect from this device - Mobile Broadband [x] MyCompany disconnect from this device - Nokia 6680 (Bluetooth) [ ] MyCompany disconnect from this device - Wireless Network [x] Foobar (83%) [ ] blahfasel (60%) [ ] muckebock (50%) Connect to Hidden Wireless Network Create New Wireless Network disconnect from this device - VPN [ ] MyCompany (openvpn) [ ] @Home (vpnc) disconnect vpn The user is able to activate or deactivate a connection by clicking into a checkbox, or even better using a radio button because you can only have one active connection for each physical device. The horizonal rules are not really necessary but I thought you like them ;-) Are there currently any plans to polish the nm-applet? Mainly plans to stop using a GtkMenu widget entirely and move to a more freeform widget. That's not in-progress yet though. Until then we can certainly discuss ways to make the current menu-based approach better, especially if we find that users are confused with it. We should have a lot better data on the new applet too given that both Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 shipped with it. You are right. The user will give response. But most of them do have a more or less technical background. The users I am thinking about are really native end users. They know their business application (more or less). They know the difference between eMail and a letter. That's it. My problem is that I have thousands of them ;-) HG Dan ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:55:35 -0800, Dan Williams d...@redhat.com wrote: On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 13:24 +0100, van Schelve wrote: We are planning to rollout NM 0.8 to a very! big number of mobile Linux systems. Our different usecases for NM are Ethernet, 3G datacards, bluetooth based 3g and in small numbers wlan as well. Today we had a discussion about nm-applet in our companay. We are worried about our user get overcharge with the usability of nm-applet. The biggest painpoint we talked about in this context is way nm presents the available devices, available connections and the active connections. The horizontal separator should be removed from nm-applet. It looks like a logical separator between different connection types. Hmm, the indentation was supposed to help make that clearer. The problem is that we do need a mechanism to distinguish between the current network connection for that device and it's associated actions (like disconnect) and the other available connections. Unfortunately we're currently stuck in a GtkMenu widget where we can't control the layout in a fine-grained manner without violating a lot of UI principles (since it is still a menu). Maybe it could be a way using differnt font size / weight? Or maybe indenting blockwise? It might work to make the available text in the line smaller perhaps to differentiate it more from the surrounding text? What do you think about presenting the list in this way: - Wired Network [ ] Auto eth0 (100Mit FD) - Mobile Broadband [x] MyCompany - Nokia 6680 (Bluetooth) [ ] MyCompany - Wireless Network [x] Foobar (83%) [ ] blahfasel (60%) [ ] muckebock (50%) Connect to Hidden Wireless Network Create New Wireless Network - VPN [ ] MyCompany (openvpn) [ ] @Home (vpnc) The user is able to activate or deactivate a connection by clicking into a checkbox, or even better using a radio button because you can only have one active connection for each physical device. The horizonal rules are not really necessary but I thought you like them ;-) Are there currently any plans to polish the nm-applet? Mainly plans to stop using a GtkMenu widget entirely and move to a more freeform widget. That's not in-progress yet though. Until then we can certainly discuss ways to make the current menu-based approach better, especially if we find that users are confused with it. We should have a lot better data on the new applet too given that both Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 shipped with it. You are right. The user will give response. But most of them do have a more or less technical background. The users I am thinking about are really native end users. They know their business application (more or less). They know the difference between eMail and a letter. That's it. My problem is that I have thousands of them ;-) HG Dan ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
Re: gui design of nm-applet
On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 13:24 +0100, van Schelve wrote: We are planning to rollout NM 0.8 to a very! big number of mobile Linux systems. Our different usecases for NM are Ethernet, 3G datacards, bluetooth based 3g and in small numbers wlan as well. Today we had a discussion about nm-applet in our companay. We are worried about our user get overcharge with the usability of nm-applet. The biggest painpoint we talked about in this context is way nm presents the available devices, available connections and the active connections. The horizontal separator should be removed from nm-applet. It looks like a logical separator between different connection types. Hmm, the indentation was supposed to help make that clearer. The problem is that we do need a mechanism to distinguish between the current network connection for that device and it's associated actions (like disconnect) and the other available connections. Unfortunately we're currently stuck in a GtkMenu widget where we can't control the layout in a fine-grained manner without violating a lot of UI principles (since it is still a menu). Maybe it could be a way using differnt font size / weight? Or maybe indenting blockwise? It might work to make the available text in the line smaller perhaps to differentiate it more from the surrounding text? Are there currently any plans to polish the nm-applet? Mainly plans to stop using a GtkMenu widget entirely and move to a more freeform widget. That's not in-progress yet though. Until then we can certainly discuss ways to make the current menu-based approach better, especially if we find that users are confused with it. We should have a lot better data on the new applet too given that both Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 shipped with it. Dan ___ NetworkManager-list mailing list NetworkManager-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
