network manager applet should use new libdbusmenu (indicator applet)

[Andrew]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopExperienceTeam/ApplicationIndicators most icons in the notification area are wanting to be replaced with the new libdbusmenu for Lucid.

NetworkManager, being a main one of these should lead the way and be replaced.

I think first port of call is to design the new menu, and second is to implement it (as the right button click menu needs to be included in the left button click menu).

[Andrew (and471)]

Attached is a design of a potential menu for network manager. It consolidates all items into one menu and makes some improvements. Please offer your comments

[Tony Espy (awe)]

First, your draft doesn't seem to render properly in either Chromium or FF.

Second, re-design of Network-Manager's menus was just done in Karmic, and another re-design seems out-of-scope for an LTS release. IMHOP this is something that should be consider for Lucid + 1, and also should be coordinated with the upstream developers.

[Andrew (and471)]

First - You can view it in Inkscape however I shall render it as a PNG so you can view it

Second - I appreciate this, however, there seem to be more improvements that can be made, not a lot was changed in said redesign. Yes I agree this should be done with upstream, however at the moment, network manager will not work with the system indicators and so something needs to be done

[Tony Espy (awe)]

@Andrew

Thanks for rendering as a PNG.

As far as getting this work into Lucid. Have you discussed this with anyone on the Desktop team? Again, Lucid is an LTS release and what you're proposing is clearly out of scope for such a release.

If changes need to be made to the applet to make it work with the system indicators then so be it, but these changes should be the minimum required to allow the current menus to work.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

@Andrew, The other problem here is that simply dbusmenu isn't capable enough to do this design, and won't be for Lucid. It is our goal to get to where this type of design is possible, but we need to get the foundation solid first. I believe that we'll have to leave network manager in the legacy notification area for Lucid. Not ideal, but a reality of having fixed 6 month development cycles.

[Andrew (and471)]

Okay, thanks for both of your advice on this :-)

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

Ted, you seem to have a handle on the scope of this bug, so I'll mark it as Triaged and unassign it from Andrew since the dbusmenu framework needs to be made more capable first.

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

I've marked this as a duplicate of bug #518523 since even though it is newer, it is part of the grouping of bugs for applications needing i-a support and should be more consistent and discoverable.