[Sugar-devel] [design] hiding icons in control panel for hardware which is not installed.

[James Cameron]

In my testing of the 3g modem feature I often needed to configure a
laptop before the 3g modem was plugged in.  To require the modem to be
plugged in first seems to be a needless restriction.  It also hides a
feature rather than make it discoverable.

I think there is a use case for configuring a modem without it being
present.

There is no frame icon already, and this is good.  If there was a
needless frame icon for a device not present, that would be a problem
worth fixing.

If the design team decides that "icons for hardware that is not present
can be hidden", then the other icons in the My Settings view that should
be reconsidered are:

- wireless, since not all systems will have a wireless device,

- collaboration server, since not all systems will have internet access,

- software update, since there is no point offering it without internet
  access,

- power management, since not all systems have automatic power
  management features.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/