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sugarlabs / sugar

Sugar GTK shell
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Wireless icon badge consistency #704

Closed quozl closed 8 years ago

quozl commented 8 years ago

The neighbourhood view uses icon badges to mark networks that are either locked or have been connected to.

The locked badge is lost when a network is connected to. Fix is to add a new badge for locked and connected to. Requires https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar-artwork/pull/92.

The connected to badge is not removed promptly when the connections are discarded using the control panel. Fix is to connect a removed signal and update the icon badge.

p.s. a patch for making discard testing faster by adding it to the buddy menu can be found at http://dev.laptop.org/~quozl/z/1bPOj7.txt

samdroid-apps commented 8 years ago

Nice patch, I like the idea. This might appear like bike-shedding, but I find the icon very hard to comprehend. Could we space the icons out a little more? Eg. stack the badges 1 on top of another?

I'd like any suggestions though.

quozl commented 8 years ago

I find the locked icon hard to comprehend already. It is too small. Even on the XO's diagonal colour pixel arrangement, it is rare to comprehend it as a padlock unless you've been told what it is. The Help activity resorts to pointing out the icon badge and saying "If the circle shows a lock symbol, expect to enter a key or password." Take a look at this microscope image of the padlock on an XO-1:

shot0007-crop

Partially close your eyes to see the icon. :grinning:

See more microscope images of wireless badges, just uploaded. Somewhat worse results on another display than XO-1, despite the box of the badge being cleaner as a result of the conventional pixel arrangement.

Perhaps the locked icon should only be used for a network that is secure and not connected, and an unlocked padlock icon for when the network is secure and connected; to express "your device has unlocked the network for itself." But are we expressing an attribute of the network or an attribute of the connection?

I agree a feature of multiple badges on an Icon would be nice, as it would let us use both a favourite star and an locked icon side by side, which would help to solve this comprehension issue.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good? What you point out are useful feature requests, but might not be necessary right now for this pull request. Is merging the pull request a better situation than not merging it; compare Sugar misleading user about whether a network is secure vs an icon that you find hard to comprehend, but will be easily learned in the same way the locked icon is.