This is by design.

See: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Guidelines/SystemStatus/

Perhaps this is a bad design.

Design choices should be coordinated across projects, not just imposed willy-nilly.

Network elements should be given a "Show in System Status" toggle in NetworkManager / Network Settings, much like they have "Connect automatically" and "Make available to all users", etc.

Designers cannot pretend to know or investigate everyone's use case (truth be told, they investigate primarily their *own* fancies and use-cases). I frequently need to control both my wired and wireless networks either together or independently, now my workflows for this are more complicated, less convenient, and not evidencing quality of forethought in usability and design.

Pushing through large, uncoordinated changes and demanding that people rely on extensions that have literally no guarantee of backwards compatibility is a major mistake.

The article you link to does not espouse a rationale, design criteria, or user-study/usability-survey/user-acceptance-test for the abandonment of access to quick Wired network settings... In fact it lists Network in the order of indicators and it redirects to a sub-page for discussion of usability of Network indicators where Wired network gets consideration.

In my case, easy-access usability has been pushed from a System Status dialog-menu-thing to a physical RJ-45 jack that sits on the cube wall behind my telephone and laptop.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Network elements should be given a "Show in System Status" toggle in
> NetworkManager / Network Settings, much like they have "Connect automatically"
> and "Make available to all users", etc.

To be clear, if given such a toggle in coordination with changes in usability assumptions then defaults such as those presented in 3.10 would not be unwarranted, even if they force the advanced user to discover a new setting for restoration of lost functionality.

(Illustrative PS, if a minority claim: To this end, I avoided GNOME Shell until I could add back my own "Open Terminal" menu item in the desktop/background menu. I switched to OS X and used GNOME Shell primarily/only on my wife's computer.)

This page documents the reasons, occasions, and features for Wired network access: https://wiki.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Guidelines/SystemStatus/Network

https://afaikblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/feature-focus-gnome-3s-new-system-status-area/

Hey Derek. Why do you need to see the status of your wired connection in the top bar? Why do you need to access wired network settings from the menu?

fwiw I filed bug 705104 for the same reason, and gave my answer to the "why" question in there.

I'll mark this one as a duplicate, so the discussion can happen in a single place.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 705104 ***

I need access to my Wired network "On/Off" switch because I work in a secure, tightly-firewalled corporate environment where I sometimes wish to disconnect from the physical network in order to join a Wi-Fi hotspot broadcast by my cell phone (or some other public/guest wireless network).

I have to do this to run "jhbuild build" for example, because the firewall won't allow git:// protocol! *wink*

Also, when I dock my laptop at my desk and it joins the Cat-6 PHY network, the network indicator still shows disconnected, which makes me feel like my OS is broken, if it can't properly tell me when I'm connected to or disconnected from a network.

When I undock, I want to so I'm disconnected from a network (unless I'm joined to Wi-Fi). And when I dock, I want to see the indicator change from disconnected to connected (primarily because I was disconnected and now I am connected, real world should reflect in OS UI/UX metaphors).

(In reply to comment #10)
> When I undock, I want to so I'm disconnected from a network (unless I'm joined

*I want it to show

(In reply to comment #10)
> Also, when I dock my laptop at my desk and it joins the Cat-6 PHY network, the
> network indicator still shows disconnected, which makes me feel like my OS is
> broken, if it can't properly tell me when I'm connected to or disconnected from
> a network.

This information comes from NetworkManager. Please file a NetworkManager bug if it thinks you're offline when you actually aren't.

(In reply to comment #9)
> I need access to my Wired network "On/Off" switch because I work in a secure,
> tightly-firewalled corporate environment where I sometimes wish to disconnect
> from the physical network in order to join a Wi-Fi hotspot broadcast by my cell
> phone (or some other public/guest wireless network).
> 
> I have to do this to run "jhbuild build" for example, because the firewall
> won't allow git:// protocol! *wink*

Thanks Derek, that's useful information.

*** Bug 709130 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Overall, I like the new design very much from what I've read and seen in the design documents, mockups, etc.  I just don't like the decision to remove the wired Ethernet status icon.

Use Case #1 for having the wired connection icon show at all times is to know when your network connection isn't working locally, as opposed to some remote problem.  If you are connected to your LAN, the icon would show connected, but if your WAN/Internet connection is down, google.com will fail to connect.  This is the first question any tech support person would ask the end user--does your computer show that it is connected (You could ask "Do you have a link light on the NIC?" but that might be difficult to see easily or there may not be a link light at all.)  We should be making this determination easier, not harder.

Use Case #2 is for knowing you are using the wired connection when both wired and wireless are available and perhaps both are connected.  In high-density environments, wireless connectivity is often slower and less reliable than a wired connection.  Having a wired icon would allow the user to be sure they were using the faster, more reliable wired connection, especially if they were intending to transfer lots of data.

Use Case #3 is for switching between different wired network configuration profiles and turning multiple NICs on or off.  I use this all the time, because some networks don't have DHCP servers, or I may want to share my network connection.  Even just seeing the status of multiple Ethernet links is useful, since I, for example, get wired pulic IPv4 connectivity from one NIC and wired public IPv6+private LAN IPv4 connectivity from a different NIC at home.

Thanks for considering these use cases.

This seems like it might be an appropriate place for a shell extension.

(In reply to comment #16)
> This seems like it might be an appropriate place for a shell extension.

Extensions are useful, but for core system features such as this, they are unreliable/unmaintainable due to their complete lack of backwards compatibility.

Scattered and unreliable contributors maintaining thousands of one-off micro-enhancements compounds complexity and eventually becomes uncontrollable.

(In reply to comment #16)
> This seems like it might be an appropriate place for a shell extension.

Shell Extensions don't work well for Use Cases #1 or #2 in a bring-your-own-device environment.  We'd have to tell the all users to install this extra extension...

Hello, for my use cases, I either need "wired" icon or "disconnected" icon in the top bar. On my up-to-date Fedora 20 I don't see any of those.

The use case #1 from comment 15 is a very good one. Some of my own:

Use case 1:
After I resume/dock the laptop (wired connection), I need to connect to VPN. I need to wait until the ethernet connection is estabilished, and then I click on the VPN item and insert my credentials. If there is no indication that I'm connected, I don't know how long to wait before I start connecting to VPN. If I do it too fast, I need to repeat that and that is very much annoying.

Use case 2:
After I resume/dock the laptop (wired connection), I want to run my web browser. In previous GNOME releases, I waited until my ethernet connection was up (a few seconds). If I run the browser before that time, all my tabs say "you're not connected to the internet" and I need to manually refresh all of them. It's much more cost-effective for me to wait two more seconds and only then run the browser - and all my tabs are loaded just fine. For this, I need to know the exact moment when I'm connected.

If you don't want to display wired icon in the top bar, please at least show "disconnected" icon when there's no connection yet. Or at least provide the information in the drop-down user menu. Thanks.

Thanks everyone for providing information on your use cases. This is really valuable information.

To provide some background, there were a number of motivations for this aspect of the new system status design:

For machines that are permanently connected to a wired connection, that icon is mostly noise. In most cases you are always connected, and the status never changes. The icon is uninteresting and gets in the way of the information that has utility.

There are many cases where a wired connection comes very close to being a physical part of the machine itself (eg. computer labs, etc).

With the new model, every icon in the top bar has an associated submenu with options. However, in the case of wired, there are no options that are of use to the vast majority of users. The proportion of people needing to turn off their wired connection is very small indeed.

You do need to know when a cable connection fails of course, and a few solutions have been proposed for this. First, a notification should be provided if a cable is physically disconnected. A similar approach could be used if you lose a connection to the internet (and the cable is still connected), although I think we'd need to discuss this.

I think we can adequately provide information about lost cable connections through notifications and in-application feedback.

This bugs makes it clear that there are other cases which aren't catered for so well by the new design, including allowing wired profiles to be changed, or disabling of wired connections. However, at this point in time I am not convinced that those cases are common enough to fundamentally alter the design to better suit them.

The required functionality is available through the control center; it is just that it is not as convenient. In design you always have to make a choice about which cases are more important than others. This might just be one of those places where we have to make a compromise. That said, extensions can be extremely helpful in this type of situation.

We knew that wired connections was going to be one of the trickier aspects of the new system status design, and are certainly open to making changes depending on how things work out. Keep the examples and use cases coming and we'll keep reviewing it.

Thanks for an extensive explanation, Alan. I agree with many of your assumptions. The major missing piece for me is the "wait until online" use case after resume or dock. (We have systems with slow NICs where it can take ten seconds or more). It would be quite obtrusive to solve this with system notifications. But "disconnected -> connecting -> (disappear)" system would solve mine and some of other use cases, and it would not occupy space 99% of the time. Thanks for considering.

Note that if you are disconnected from the internet, you *will* see a disconnected icon in the top bar, because it is important status.

(In reply to comment #22)
> Note that if you are disconnected from the internet, you *will* see a
> disconnected icon in the top bar, because it is important status.

Well, if I had seen it, I wouldn't have participated in this discussion in the first place :-)

Now that I tried to play with network connections extensively, the icon actually appeared a few times. But in most cases it doesn't show up properly (additionally, the airplane mode appears quite often when it shouldn't). I'll try to report a proper bug tomorrow (separate from this issue, to avoid cluttering it) and link it here. Thanks for mentioning it.

(In reply to comment #20)

> well by the new design, including allowing wired profiles to be changed, or
> disabling of wired connections. However, at this point in time I am not
> convinced that those cases are common enough to fundamentally alter the design
> to better suit them.
> 
> The required functionality is available through the control center; it is just
> that it is not as convenient. In design you always have to make a choice about
> which cases are more important than others. This might just be one of those
> places where we have to make a compromise. That said, extensions can be
> extremely helpful in this type of situation.
> 
> We knew that wired connections was going to be one of the trickier aspects of
> the new system status design, and are certainly open to making changes
> depending on how things work out. Keep the examples and use cases coming and
> we'll keep reviewing it.

Allan,

what if you display the wired selection submenu if *and only if* there are multiple connections?

In this case, an "always wired one network adapter" PC will have no menu, like in 3.10, but if you have more adapters you get the menu (which I think this is what the majority of "more than one adapter" users would want).

Thanks for considering this option,
Dan.

(In reply to comment #23)
> Now that I tried to play with network connections extensively, the icon
> actually appeared a few times. But in most cases it doesn't show up properly
> (additionally, the airplane mode appears quite often when it shouldn't). I'll
> try to report a proper bug tomorrow (separate from this issue, to avoid
> cluttering it) and link it here. Thanks for mentioning it.

Reported as bug 709634 and bug 709638. If at least the latter is fixed, the number of complaints could go down.

*** Bug 705104 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

(In reply to comment #24)
> 
> what if you display the wired selection submenu if *and only if* there are
> multiple connections?
> 
I think that would be a good solution. I don't think we want to relegate this to an extension. Some more usecases from [1]:

"I have a profile for simple DHCP and one for an encrypted wired connection that needs authentication. I do shuffle between them often enough that I'd like to have direct access to them in the panel."

"I have an Ethernet and USB Modem and I shift between them when I need speed, my USB modem is faster. Now I have to go through several steps to disconnect my Ethernet."

Those users have multiple wired connections (and there's a third user in that topic with multiple wired connections as well), but remember that in Derek's use case he has one wired connection in addition to wireless.

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1336858

I have recently upgraded to 3.10 on a Ubuntu system. 
I run my system over WIFI and since the upgrade my connectivity status Icon has been broken. It permanently shows a crossed out twin computer icon and no WIFI status. These are accessible from the system menu as described variously above.

I would like to have the WIFI status icon on the top bar back as it gives me a flavour of connection strength and if the connection has been dropped - which happens occasionally.

What I absolutely don't need is an icon which tells me nothing useful about my connection status - effectively a dead and redundant icon which cannot be switched off.

This is annoying to say the least - loss of functionali9ty and a dead status icon to boot.

(In reply to comment #28)
> I have recently upgraded to 3.10 on a Ubuntu system. 
> I run my system over WIFI and since the upgrade my connectivity status Icon has
> been broken. It permanently shows a crossed out twin computer icon and no WIFI
> status. These are accessible from the system menu as described variously above.
> 
> I would like to have the WIFI status icon on the top bar back as it gives me a
> flavour of connection strength and if the connection has been dropped - which
> happens occasionally.
> 
> What I absolutely don't need is an icon which tells me nothing useful about my
> connection status - effectively a dead and redundant icon which cannot be
> switched off.
> 
> This is annoying to say the least - loss of functionali9ty and a dead status
> icon to boot.

I have just installed upgrades and my problem has resolved itself. Thanks.

Hi all.

I'm sorry I didn't read all comments before, but let me share my own use case.
I'm a student and at least twice a day I go to work in my laboratory where I get acces to network by wire, and sometimes in common places by wifi.

One of the feature I use more of others is to quickly check in status bar if my wifi is enabled or not. Same for wired connection.

In my own opinion, possibility to disable wired interface is maybe not really useful (Maybe it is for others) but at least see the 'status' of network in... 'status' bar is essential.

Also, my wifi drivers are not fully supported and I really have to check OFTEN if my wifi is connected/enabled and wired is connected/enabled.

It's also difficult to know why I don't have connection when I come back from meeting, to finally see that my RJ45 with broken tab is just a little unplugged. Again, just quickly check the status bar is useful.

Maybe is it possible to add feature at least as an extension ?

Thanks.
Baptiste.

I think that not showing wired connections is unexpected for most users (at least me) because it is not consistent to what happens with other types of connections.

Sure you can access the wired options through the System Settings, but I think it adds extra complexity to this kind of connection.

The use case I can think of is when I want to switch from wireless to wired network, or viceversa, without pluging and unplugging the ethernet cable.

I have another usecase.  I do a lot of remote user support for very non-technical users.  If someone calls me and says their "internet" isn't working, it's a lot easier to ask them what the icon at the top looks like instead of trying to guide them through system settings or terminal commands.

(In reply to comment #44)
> Not to troll this into the ground on supposedly offtopic concerns...

Please stop that, it is offtopic! Consider this a last warning. I've asked various times to be a bit ontopic. You're not adding any value with this, it is just wasting time. I'm going to hide this comment. I've warned enough times I think.

My comments are not off-topic re: configurability.

But I get it that my claim about how "opposition to configurability is unthinking and automatized and baseless/groundless" is seen as offensive.

This very subject, and censorship in regards to it, is hurting GNOME:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-list/2011-November/msg00080.html

I refuse to see myself as a victim of this perpetuated ignorance. Rather I will do what I can in peace, I will triumph, and I will change the status quo (but not before getting banned from Bugzilla, apparently).

It is absolutely off-topic. This bug is about displaying wired networking in the system status indicators and menus and use cases. Adding a setting for hiding/showing it is only one possible solution. Another could be to always show wired networking, or to show wired networking if you have more than one configured interface.

If you're uncomfortable with our design process of thinking through lots of complex use cases and problems and trying to come up with solutions for all of them, instead of immediately adding a setting wherever possible, that's certainly a discussion to have, but it's not appropriate here. In a bug about wired networking.

FWIW, "show wired networking if you have more than one
configured interface" is not a valid option. But I'll leave you to think thru the complications.

(In reply to comment #49)
> My comments are not off-topic re: configurability.

This bug is about the visibility of the network icon in the new combined status menu for wired connections. Hibernation, terminal preference and general ranting about "configurability" and "psychological mind control" are *very* much off-topic. All you are doing at this point is sabotaging your own bug report by distracting from relevant information (last seen in comment #33), making a  resolution less likely.

(In reply to comment #50)
> ... our design process of thinking through lots of
> complex use cases and problems and trying to come up with solutions for all of
> them ...

This characterization can be shown to be a lie that results from a delusional in-group dynamic that is occurring here in GNOME at the moment.

Gnome 3 is developed with one user in mind:
https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.10/figures/status-menu.png

If your characterization were true, then you would have a brief of use-cases and user stories to point to for justifying access to Wired network as a problem needing removal, instead it was put in late in development just prior to release. Instead this bug is legitimized and users comment and devs and designer balk and bugmasters censor.

Here's a user story for you: "As a user I want to turn off my wired and send all traffic through a wireless I don't normally connect to."

For like one minute this was the easiest thing to do in Gnome 3, now it's gone. /me has a sad

Derek if you have a bit of spare time I suggest watching this talk from the last GUADEC:
http://www.superlectures.com/guadec2013/how-to-not-report-your-ux-bug

Hi all,
i have the same problem of Derek, so for me this is to be considered as a bug.

Actually i use nmcli from a terminal to switch between my wired network configurations (i need to use more than one lan), so i don't think this is a network manager problem. 

Regards,
Luigi

Allan,

Additional use case: laptop which is sometimes docked [ethernet], sometimes wireless [wifi], and sometimes manually jacked in with an ethernet cable in the conference room.

In the latter case especially, knowing whether or not I successfully managed to get a network connection is really important; not all the ports are patched at the switch (for instance) and you really want to know whether you made it through to link connectivity and DHCP.

Can we please have the network indicator back?

AfC

Can someone tell me how I control/connect to a VPN if my network icon is not visible.

(In reply to comment #58)
> Can someone tell me how I control/connect to a VPN if my network icon is not
> visible.

The status menu contains a VPN section if you have VPN connections set up.

Thanks Florian. 

I really hope this gets reverted. Its highly non-intuitive to say the least. Feels like we are trying to make it harder for people to find things

Having everything(*) in a single menu should actually make it easier to find - less places to look into :-)

(*) OK, *almost* everything - a11y and keyboard still have their own menus

Well I class myself as an advanced user, and I had no idea what to do. I thought it was a bug. 

Sorry to be negative but when a user has to resort to using Google to find out how to use their OS, you know something is wrong - just my 10 cents worth

Out of interest, how would I take my wired connection and change it from DHCP to static for example?

Adrian, this (currently unadressed) use case is already cited in comment 15.

Created attachment 258444 [details]
Diagram of Wired networking usability in 3.8 vs. 3.10

This photograph shows me using GNOME 3.8 at work. I cannot yet adopt GNOME 3.10 at work because it does not satisfy the User Story from comment 54: "As a user I want to turn off my wired and send all traffic through a wireless I don't normally connect to."

The annotations on the photo show usability differences between GNOME 3.8 and GNOME 3.10 for satisfying the given User Story.

We are now up to comment 65 and I am finding it increasingly difficult to find the useful information in this bug. Please, only comment if you have use cases that have not been covered already.

*** Bug 711474 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I use my laptop at work and home.  I've got multiple networking profiles.  I need to change between static vs DHCP profiles (although there is always a DHCP server in the network, only specific IP's are allowed to go throw firewall if I'm at work).

Allow me to paraphrase a statement by Bill Gates: "That’s not a bug, it’s a feature."

Isn't this Linux?  Where users should be allowed to choose if they want to see or not wired networking info (preferences page or config file or something else?).

I was so confused when I found the wifi indicator is missing. To controll my network as most as conviniently, I just want the wifi status icon back.

(In reply to comment #70)
> I was so confused when I found the wifi indicator is missing.

That is a different issue - the *wifi* indicator is expected to be shown, if you don't see it, that's a bug (read that as: "Please file it" :-)).
This bug is about *wired* connections, where the icon is hidden on purpose.

*** Bug 715154 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I use GNOME at home and at work. I've recently upgraded the work computer to GNOME 3.10. As sysadmin, when I turn on my computer in the morning I start to check that everything is ok, I've realised that seems the eth indicator is gone, I have to wait to open an app (tipically a mail client or a web browser) to start to collect information about the status of my network.

Under the General tab of a network connection there is a Firewall Zone setting. This is a label which NetworkManager applies to networks and the firewalld program uses to turn on/off ports, depending on your location.

Unfortunately, although you can assign a different firewall zone to two different wifi connection, Home and Public say, your wired connection can only have one zone for all networks you plug it into.

With the old design you could click on the visible wired connection icon and change zone as you plug into different networks. With the new design you have to ignore the list of networks in the menu because they are only wifi and grope through the settings applets for the other list of networks.

The firewalld ships as standard on Fedora 18, 19, 20. The default zone is public, which has most ports blocked. The result is that you can't share music via rhythmbox, you can't chat on the local network, totem can't share music or videos with your tv, and you can't share files. ie., the apps are broken and there is no obvious way of fixing them (to the average user).

Windows handles this much better: when you first connect to a wifi network it asks which zone you would like to put it in and explains some of the consequences.

Ideally:

- all network connections should always be shown in the menu
- the firewall zone should be shown alongside
- clicking the zone should present a UI for picking another one
- an 'other' zone would present a UI for creating and configuring new zones

rubensa: "Isn't this Linux?  Where users should be allowed to choose if they want to see or not wired networking info (preferences page or config file or something else?)."

No. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg00861.html

it is not correct, sane or even possible to offer you all the choices that could possibly be offered through any GUI. All GUIs are, from one conceptual standpoint, essentially an exercise in strategically limiting choice. You cannot fall back on the lazy 'but Linux is about choice!!!' argument when demanding that a given choice be offered; you must present a good specific argument as to why that particular choice ought to be offered.

*** Bug 721227 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

If I have two network profile is really more comfortable using the icon instead. of entering the option panel.
So, isn't possible to make a choice in the options to show or not the icon? Or make it visible if two or more profiles are settled.

In support for the multiple wired profiles please read through Bug 721227 for another use case.

Thanks for all the information, everyone. All the specific issues and use cases are invaluable. I've reviewed the comments, and can identify the following issues:

1. Changing configuration profiles (eg. for changing between static and dynamic IP) is inconvenient [comment 8].
2. It is inconvenient to turn off wired networking. This is used to disable wired and switch to another network interface instead. This can be desirable if the wired is network is restricted in some way [comments 9 & 15], or if another connection is faster (comment 27).
3. No indication when a wired connection is ready to be used [comment 19].
4. No indication when a wired connection is inoperative, such as when a wired port isn't live (comment 57).
5. No indication when a wired network connection has been lost (possibly while you have been away from the machine) [comment 31].
6. No indication when there is no route to Internet while on a wired connection [comment 15].
7. No indication that wired is being used instead of another interface (primarily wi-fi, but could also be mobile broadband) [comment 15]. (This is a general issue in relation to network status and is not specific to wired connections. Also, it's not something that the new system status design introduced.)

There are a number of things that we can do to address these issues, and I think that they can be resolved without the need to have an icon in the top bar for wired network connectivity.

I think we should try and use notifications to resolve the various feedback issues. Specifically, we can show notifications for:

 (i) wired network connections are established
 (ii) there is no route to the Internet
 (iii) a cable is unplugged (or comes loose)
 (iv) if a cable is connected but is dead

We could also provide a sub-menu for each wired connection. I don't think that this should be displayed all the time, since wired interfaces frequently go unused. That leaves two options for when it should be displayed:

 1. When there is more than one configuration profile.
 2. When a network cable is plugged in.

We should also try and find a way to indicate which network connection is being used by default.

I'm concerned that notifications provide points of information, so would be useful for indicating change, but will not help when returning to a machine that has been unused for some time and immediately determine the state.  Going through a series of notifications indicating all the point changes that lead to the current state would be wasteful, and having notifications that automatically dismiss after a certain period of time would leave us back in the position of not having the information readily at hand.

It seems very similar to the audio icon, in that people want to know quickly the current state of the volume, because it's important to them making decisions such as "can/should I start playing music", but do not expect it to change often without their own input.  The audio icon is still useful and always displayed even when muted, and I think a "network state" indicator would be equally, if not more useful since the network can change state without user interaction (wifi drop-off, router problems downstream, etc).

As mentioned earlier, the decision seems at odds with most of the other indicators.  The only time I would ever expect *not* to see the networking icon is where networking is not involved (as the bluetooth, battery and accessibility icons currently do), not when it is connected and active.

I understand there is a drive to reduce on-screen clutter, but given the use-cases stated above for knowing the status of the network quickly, perhaps the decision to remove the icon when it is merely conveying "everything's as expected" information should be reversed?

(In reply to comment #80)
> 5. No indication when a wired network connection has been lost (possibly while
> you have been away from the machine) [comment 31].

No, the current behavior if the wired network is lost is to display the network disconnected icon. The absence of that icon indicates that the network is functioning correctly (though that's not very clear if you're unfamiliar with the behavior). I believe this is since 3.10.1.

(In reply to comment #81)
> I'm concerned that notifications provide points of information, so would be
> useful for indicating change, but will not help when returning to a machine
> that has been unused for some time and immediately determine the state.  Going
> through a series of notifications indicating all the point changes that lead to
> the current state would be wasteful, and having notifications that
> automatically dismiss after a certain period of time would leave us back in the
> position of not having the information readily at hand.

Notifications for state changes that are no longer relevant would be removed; we also have the ability to show notifications that have been displayed while you were away.

> It seems very similar to the audio icon, in that people want to know quickly
> the current state of the volume, because it's important to them making
> decisions such as "can/should I start playing music", but do not expect it to
> change often without their own input.  The audio icon is still useful and
> always displayed even when muted, and I think a "network state" indicator would
> be equally, if not more useful since the network can change state without user
> interaction (wifi drop-off, router problems downstream, etc).
...

Yes, but wired network connections change state very infrequently - hence the special treatment.

> Yes, but wired network connections change state very infrequently - hence the
> special treatment.

Only in a certain limited and diminishing subset of use-cases such as computer labs.

In the modern workforce of corporate-issued workstation-class laptops with docking stations, wired and wireless network indicators change quite frequently.

Perhaps Europe is behind the U.S. in the trend, but I really doubt that.

Allan, can you really say you don't use a laptop, you don't use a wired dock at your desk, and you don't take your laptop into frequent meetings where you switch from wired to wireless?

(In reply to comment #84)
> ...can you really say you don't use a laptop, you don't use a wired dock at
> your desk, and you don't take your laptop into frequent meetings where you
> switch from wired to wireless?

No need to get personal about it. The point we're trying to make to Allan is that frequent switches from disconnected to wireless to wired cable back to wireless to docked to DO indeed occur, and it's really helpful to see the indicator up top. 

The alternative will be me constantly opening a terminal to run `ip addr` to see if the network is up. Which is a silly thing to force on our users, and GNOME can do better. I'd like to hope that the design team will hear the strong voice that has been raised in this conversation requesting that this status indicator be restored.

AfC

> > It seems very similar to the audio icon, in that people want to know quickly
> > the current state of the volume, because it's important to them making
> > decisions such as "can/should I start playing music", but do not expect it to
> > change often without their own input.  The audio icon is still useful and
> > always displayed even when muted, and I think a "network state" indicator would
> > be equally, if not more useful since the network can change state without user
> > interaction (wifi drop-off, router problems downstream, etc).
> ...
> 
> Yes, but wired network connections change state very infrequently - hence the
> special treatment.

Special treatment confuses users who expect consistency.  That's an extremely poor design decision as far as my limited knowledge of design goes, and so far there doesn't seem to be a coherent reason behind why the icon was removed, let alone a justifiable one?  There have been a lot of comments pointing out the difficulties with the design decision, but very few pinpoint the principle followed in removing it?  I'm sure everyone would be much more on-side if they could see the rationale in removing it, other than it doesn't change very much.

Having the icon, and a method to change wired profiles without 5 clicks (corner icon, settings button, network button, wired list item, profile of choice) is valuable to people, as evidenced by this bug, and in recent history Gnome has always tried to hide something where it can, but still give quick access where it can't (eg accessibility).  Having the icon to indicate status, and quick profile selection if there is more than one wired profile available, seem like obvious decisions, but I'm not a designer.  Could the designers please put forward rationales for these omissions, so we can try to understand why these changes were made in the first place, and why they appear to not be being reconsidered?

(In reply to comment #86)
> > > It seems very similar to the audio icon, in that people want to know quickly
> > > the current state of the volume, because it's important to them making
> > > decisions such as "can/should I start playing music", but do not expect it to
> > > change often without their own input.  The audio icon is still useful and
> > > always displayed even when muted, and I think a "network state" indicator would
> > > be equally, if not more useful since the network can change state without user
> > > interaction (wifi drop-off, router problems downstream, etc).
> > ...
> > 
> > Yes, but wired network connections change state very infrequently - hence the
> > special treatment.
> 
> Special treatment confuses users who expect consistency.  That's an extremely
> poor design decision as far as my limited knowledge of design goes, and so far
> there doesn't seem to be a coherent reason behind why the icon was removed, let
> alone a justifiable one?  There have been a lot of comments pointing out the
> difficulties with the design decision, but very few pinpoint the principle
> followed in removing it?  I'm sure everyone would be much more on-side if they
> could see the rationale in removing it, other than it doesn't change very much.
> 
> Having the icon, and a method to change wired profiles without 5 clicks (corner
> icon, settings button, network button, wired list item, profile of choice) is
> valuable to people, as evidenced by this bug, and in recent history Gnome has
> always tried to hide something where it can, but still give quick access where
> it can't (eg accessibility).  Having the icon to indicate status, and quick
> profile selection if there is more than one wired profile available, seem like
> obvious decisions, but I'm not a designer.  Could the designers please put
> forward rationales for these omissions, so we can try to understand why these
> changes were made in the first place, and why they appear to not be being
> reconsidered?

Didn't Allan do just that in comment 20 ?

(In reply to comment #20)
> For machines that are permanently connected to a wired connection, that icon is
> mostly noise. In most cases you are always connected, and the status never
> changes. The icon is uninteresting and gets in the way of the information that
> has utility.

So I guess this is my fundamental disagreement then, "uninteresting" is in my opinion, neither accurate nor sufficient grounds for giving the icon inconsistent treatment from any of the others.  I'm not sure how one determines what "gets in the way" of other information, but it appears there's now very little other information in that area, and presumably Gnome is still intended for laptops and desktops and even tablets rather than phones with such space constrained screen real estate.

Since icons such as VPN status, which don't change at all, are present when that information needs conveying, the same guidelines should be applied to the wired networking, so as a suggestion in keeping with everything else:

No icon: no network
Disconnected icon: You have a cable plugged in, but can't get anywhere
Connected network icon: You can get to your wired network

Users will be able to figure out on their own what the icons represent, rather than wondering why they plug in a cable and aren't being told they've done so, or that the state of their machine has changed.  I can see the point of a single "you have no networking" icon, but I don't think it should come at the cost of the wired network icon.

> This bugs makes it clear that there are other cases which aren't catered for so
> well by the new design, including allowing wired profiles to be changed, or
> disabling of wired connections. However, at this point in time I am not
> convinced that those cases are common enough to fundamentally alter the design
> to better suit them.

So this bug really encompasses two issues which are easily fused together because they relate to the same component of functionality.  I certainly care more about easily changing between wired profiles (particularly since none of my are set to automatically connect, which is intentional) than about the icon showing me I'm connected.

Wired profiles are offered by the system, and should be catered for when they're used by the user. If there's only one, and no possible confusion, then fine, but giving users a capability and then hindering them when they try to use it because it's deemed too uncommon seems like a poor way to treat users.  If it's that uncommon, remove the capability for profiles, however I see a similar if not greater number of complaints for that action.  It's particularly frustrating (which is why this bug is getting so many responses) when there's no need to change how things work for anyone except those trying to use that feature.

> We knew that wired connections was going to be one of the trickier aspects of
> the new system status design, and are certainly open to making changes
> depending on how things work out. Keep the examples and use cases coming and
> we'll keep reviewing it.

I'm glad the process is open to review.  I'd suggest that for anyone using the wired profiles feature, this design is not working out.  I look forward to seeing changes that bring consistency and that bring more flexibility for cases deemed less common...

(In reply to comment #84)
> > Yes, but wired network connections change state very infrequently - hence the
> > special treatment.
> 
> Only in a certain limited and diminishing subset of use-cases such as computer
> labs.
> 
> In the modern workforce of corporate-issued workstation-class laptops with
> docking stations, wired and wireless network indicators change quite
> frequently.
> 
> Perhaps Europe is behind the U.S. in the trend, but I really doubt that.
> 
> Allan, can you really say you don't use a laptop, you don't use a wired dock at
> your desk, and you don't take your laptop into frequent meetings where you
> switch from wired to wireless?

Sorry, I might not have been clear here. The point I was making is that once you are connected, the connection state is usually very unlikely to change.

This does actually translate to my own usage - I use a laptop and I'm constantly docking and undocking it, but I don't really need an icon for wired connectivity in the top bar. I can see when I've switched over because the wifi icon disappears, and it's *extremely* rare that my wired connection fails.

(In reply to comment #85)
> ... The point we're trying to make to Allan is
> that frequent switches from disconnected to wireless to wired cable back to
> wireless to docked to DO indeed occur, and it's really helpful to see the
> indicator up top. 
> 
> The alternative will be me constantly opening a terminal to run `ip addr` to
> see if the network is up. Which is a silly thing to force on our users, and
> GNOME can do better. I'd like to hope that the design team will hear the strong
> voice that has been raised in this conversation requesting that this status
> indicator be restored.

Can you say how/why the proposal I made in comment 80 would not work for you? It isn't clear to me.

(In reply to comment #90)
> Can you say how/why the proposal I made in comment 80 would not work for you?
> It isn't clear to me.

That proposal should work for all of the "I want to switch my connection" use cases presented in this bug: users with multiple wired profiles can easily change between them, and users who need to be able to toggle between wired and wi-fi can easily do that (if a cable in plugged in). Looks good to me.

I think the indicator is the remaining issue of contention and confusion. What's unclear to me is why a wired network indicator is undesirable. Unless I've missed something in this mammoth bug, the only justification I could find is that there is no wired connection submenu, and each indicator should have an associated submenu. That made sense to me at the time, but now you've agreed that submenu is indeed (conditionally) desirable. (A possible solution would be to display it under the same conditions as the submenu.)

at 91 comments I can't quickly understand if this has been raised so I'll do it anyway.

When I plug my phone and activate tethering via USB, this is treated as "wired" connection and the icon goes away, so it is impossible (or at least very cumbersome) to see and control its status.

My network icons and submenus completely disappeared from status menu. I can't see wi-fi nor broadband icons/menus. No error or warning at all in .xsession-errors.

I find that comment #80 here makes a lot of sense, and it describes more or less all the use cases where the "wired" connection icon is missed. 

What I fail to understand is why  there is a discussion about "adding a wired icon". Couldn't the icon in the status indicator simply behave like the icon of NM worked in 3.8? It shows the wired connection when it is the one used _instead_ of the wifi. And clicking on it will show "wired" in the menu, exactly like 3.8. I think that's the less surprising way to do it.

I really do not see the advantage of simply make the icon disappear when a wired connection is active --- to spare 16 pixel of real estate?. I really think that most people is used to have some signal that the system is online... the paradigm that if you are online no icon is displayed unless you are online with a wifi seems quite unintuitive to me. 

But the important part I think is having the "wired" section of the menu when clicking on the status portion of the panel --- this would nicely solve the surprise if no icon is shown --- you click there and you see your choice of wired connection there. (Yes, I am one of the strange one which have to choose among different wired connection, depending on location). 

Thanks anyway for the work on gnome-shell --- it's very nice

When I plug in the ethernet cable the wifi stays connected and I am never sure which path the packets are taking. So I also click on 'turn off' under the wifi section of the menu, and that apparently triggers Airplane Mode.

So now when I am on the wired network there is an aeroplane icon visible...

I can also click 'off' in the Airplane Mode section, which then disappears along with the icon. The wifi remains off, wired still connected. I don't know what difference that made - bluetooth is still off.

(In reply to comment #90)

> Can you say how/why the proposal I made in comment 80 would not work for you?
> It isn't clear to me.

My answer would be, no, please not more notifications. Looking for a status indicator. I'm not sure what it is, but notifications just get lost. Maybe too many GTK2 apps still doing the "wrong" thing, but despite several years of trying I still haven't been able to figure out how gnome-shell notifications can be used effectively. The net effect is that I see them as visual noise, have turned them off when possible, etc. I'd hate there to be more, especially for something that is **status**.

AfC

I have discussed this issue with Jon McCann and Jakub Steiner over the past 4/5 days, and some pertinent points came up:

 * We all recognised the point made in a number of places in this bug, that consistent wired network status behaviour is desirable (both because it would provide a predictable way to check network status, and because it makes for a clear model for system status more generally).

 * Notifications to communicate changes in wired network state could become rather annoying in some cases (like frequently docking/undocking a laptop) - since they can grab a fair amount of attention.

 * Wired network state isn't actually binary: sometimes you encounter a "no route to internet" case when you are connected to your router but it isn't talking to the outside world. We want to indicate this state in the same way that we do for wifi connections.

 * In many of the cases where a wired network is used, there are only two system status icons (volume and battery/power off) - which can look a bit odd. Having an additional icon in this case could actually help to communicate the idea of system status.

I would also say that the evidence provided for this bug has demonstrated the wide variety of use-cases involved, and that this makes me concerned about our ability to cater to all the relevant cases using notifications. The plan to only show the wired network menu some of the time also has the potential to generate design and code complexity.

Based on the feedback provided in this bug, as well as these discussions, I'm going to suggest the following amendment to the existing design (this replaces my previous suggestion in comment 80):

 * Show a top bar icon and a system status submenu for wired network [1] - but only when a wired network cable is plugged in.
 * If a wired network connection has no route to the internet, show a no-route variant of the wired network icon (I think we want to replace network-no-route-symbolic with network-wired-no-route-symbolic and network-wireless-no-route-symbolic).
 * Don't show the network-offline-symbolic icon in the top bar when there isn't a network connection

I think we should also pursue a way to indicate which network interface is being used. Maybe we can dim inactive network interfaces in the menu...

[1] Status strings should include "Connected", "No internet access" and "Off". The submenu should include "Turn On" or "Turn Off", a list of profiles with switches (if there is more than one profile), and a link to "Wired Network Settings" (this is very similar to the mobile broadband and VPN submenus [2]).

[2] https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/shell/system-menu/combined-system-status-menu-v4-submenus.png

+1 for Allan's proposal in #97. The only (minor) comment would be for: 

* Don't show the network-offline-symbolic icon in the top bar when there isn't
a network connection

I would change this in not showing any icon when there is no possible connection, i.e.: 

    - there is a wired interface but no cable connected (good hint for a connector failure, which is more common than you can think...) 

    - there is no wireless interface or it is manually shut off (this is potentially different from airplane mode --- BT could be on). 

While a think that the network-offline-symbolic is appropriate if the system could potentially be connected but it can't do it (no routing, or wrong credential, or wireless hot-spot failure)

Allan, this makes a lot of sense. But contrary to what Romano suggests, when a cable is plugged but for some reason the connection is not up, a not-connected icon should be show: users expect to be able to check the result. I don't think it's reasonable to show an icon when not cable is plugged, as this happens most of the time (and I guess that was your position when you chose the new design).

Milan, 

my fault with the double negation (sorry). I was meaning exactly the same you are saying: not showing any icon when the cable is not connected... 

I think that "no icon" should mean: "no connection because I want no connection". The icon with the broken connection mean "no connection although I would like to have one". 

Maybe the comment on the broken cable was misleading. I think that if I connect a cable, and no icon shows up, is a good signal that there is something physically wrong going on.

(In reply to comment #99)
> Allan, this makes a lot of sense. But contrary to what Romano suggests, when a
> cable is plugged but for some reason the connection is not up, a not-connected
> icon should be show: users expect to be able to check the result. ...

I agree that there should be feedback if you plug in a cable and it doesn't work. The idea I had in my #c97 proposal was that a wired network icon would be shown when a cable is plugged in, but you would have variations of the icon to indicate the state of the connection. Specifically, I think we probably need to use the following variations of the wired network status icon:

 * network-wired-symbolic
 * network-wired-error-symbolic
 * network-wired-no-route-symbolic

This may result in situations where you have a wired and a wireless icon in the top bar (if the wired network has an error and the wireless connection is being used instead).

+1 for #c101. It makes a lot of sense.

If you do not like the two icons, you can display just one if there is one working connection --- the working one. You can access the status of the other interfaces in the menu.

On the other hand, if you have a cable plugged in, WiFi on, and the two connection have errors, I think that the expected behavior is to have the two errors icons --- at least in my opinion.

Created attachment 267074 [details] [review]
network: Add a Wired device

This isn't quite like the design, as we don't show icons for other
devices when wired is in an error state.

--

I tried to implement the full design, but it's difficult in the face of
multiple Wired interfaces, and other forms of genericism. Both Allan and I
are talking with the NetworkManager team about this to see what kinds of
users face multiple interfaces during their day.

Review of attachment 267074 [details] [review]:

LGTM but didn't test it.

::: js/ui/status/network.js
@@ -512,3 @@
 
-    _autoConnect: function() {
-        // FIXME: DUN devices are configured like modems, so

Is this FIXME no longer relevant now?

DUN devices won't show up to NetworkManager unless they're manually configured by the user.

Review of attachment 267074 [details] [review]:

Right, the comment has always been bogus, and this is good to go. Then we can improve on it to match designs.

Comment on attachment 267074 [details] [review]
network: Add a Wired device

Attachment 267074 [details] pushed as 7051411 - network: Add a Wired device


Doesn't match the designs entirely, so I'm still leaving it open until we decide on new designs. The code's tricky, too!

No idea if this use case if covered, anyway:
My laptop at work is connected via a docking station. My network cable is connected from my (voip) phone to the docking station. There is a wifi connection, but it is considered insecure (meaning: not company network, just Internet).

The cable to my phone sometimes connects badly (at the phone side). Could be while I was working, or when I start the laptop. So cable connected at one end, not in the phone. It would be nice to point out that although there is a WiFi connection, the cable connection went to lala land.

This could be a bit difficult though as there is a known WiFi connection, etc. I'm wondering if you can actually determine if the cable is actually in at one side, but not the other.

(In reply to comment #108)
> No idea if this use case if covered, ...

I think it *should* be covered by the new design. See the network status icon notes:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/SystemStatus#Top_Bar_Icons

Note that are still waiting for some things in network manager to make it work fully though.

I think the committed patch covers most of what's been brought up here, so let's mark this as resolved. Please file new bugs if any other issues are discovered: it'll be easier than using this monster thread. :)