When I click the network indicator on the top bar, a menu appears. I can turn the wired and wireless interfaces on/off and select a network to connect to for the wireless interface.

As soon as the wireless interface tries to connect to a network a "Connecting" and subsequent "Authenitcating" message appears in stead of the on/off switch.

Consider a case where there are multiple known (e.g. you have the password and have connected before) networks available. Connecting to one fails (time-out resulting in an authentication error, you get the password screen and click "cancel") and within about 2 seconds it starts attempting to connect to the next known network. If connecting to these all fail the user is caught in an endless loop of password error pop-ups, which is very annoying. In this case I would just want to disable wifi for the time being, but because the on/off switch is gone from the wifi menu while trying to connect, I now have to go to Network Settings to disable wifi from there.

Is there any way to display the on/off switch AND the status?

Please note that this use case is not far fetched: traveling through South East Asia I've been staying in a lot of hotels that use multiple WiFi routers throughout the building that are all configured as seperate access points (different SSID's). These places regularly have very poor network/internet performance and use home networing grade routers that are overloaded/crashing regularly. It's been a common experience for me that I've had multiple AP's available but all of them fail to connect.