Andrew "Silver Blade" Greenwood wrote:
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Can you come up with a design?
I don't know about others, but one thing that has always bothered me enormously is that it's hard to get an overview. Perhaps it would be possible to list all connections at once in a tree view for example, instead of forcing the user to open and close dialogs all the time. It might even work to put some of the options in this tree view. Or perhaps it would be better (as in more attainable) to just open property sheets next to tree view instead of forcing the user to navigate through multiple windows (first selecting the connection in "Network Connections" and requesting its properties, then selecting the desired item, click on properties, and then possibly even a click on advanced).
To illustrate my thoughts I've created a mock-up that shows a lay-out that would at least be an improvement over the XP layout for me: http://home.hccnet.nl/th.v.d.gronde/networkconnection.png For the mock-up source (Glade+Python, if anyone is interested in expanding on this idea): http://home.hccnet.nl/th.v.d.gronde/networkconnection.zip
You'll have to imagine the details like icons and so on, but it shows the general idea of putting all the connections in one tree view, which makes it easy to quickly navigate to the desired property page, to switch between property pages (of different connections) to compare settings and last but not least it avoids screen clutter! (try navigating to the list of IP addresses under Windows, you'll have four windows open!!!)
There would definitely be some details to fill-in. Like what to do when navigating to a different property page when the current one has been modified but not yet applied? But these issues should be possible to resolve, either by looking at what other people do or (when lacking satisfactory examples) by devising new solutions.