Comment 6 for bug 611336

OK, one problem here is that the applet icon does different jobs for wired and wireless connections. In my opinion, the netstatus icon should show transmit-receive information, whichever network type is being monitored:

- That is what people (certainly myself) expect from it (MS Windows does this for example).
- Signal strength information is provided by the network manager icon that is [always?] displayed in the notification area, and so should not be required from the netstatus applet.

I believe themes that do not provide gnome-netstatus signal strength icons (0-24, 25-49, etc.) invoke this behaviour, since this is what occurs on my home computer using wireless, and not using the humanity theme (these icons default to those in the gnome directory). Perhaps the current behaviour should be a selectable option if anyone thinks there is a demand for it.

Since wired and wireless networks are differentiated in the network manager icon scheme, I suggest that the netstatus icon should symbolise a generic network, neither wired nor wireless, and can therefore be more consistent. I've created a sample set of netstatus icons (including those for signal strength) in this spirit, which I will attach along with a preview image. Of course it's the principle I would like to see adopted, not necessarily these specific icons.

Do let me know what the official thoughts are on this. Cheers.

P.S. The signal strength icons will particularly indistinct on a standard panel due to a current bug which scales the icon by two pixels unnecessarily, resulting in rather blurry icons. Set panel size to 26 for the clear version.