A Laptop Scenario
This scenario walks a user, Raheem Mahmood, through using his laptop for a couple days. His overall situation is similar to John in the storyboards, but he's not a Solaris Engineer, and he is not the kind of person inclined to do a lot of setup upfront. That is, like most people, he won't sit down and fill out all his possible networking information before he gets started. So, part of the point of this scenario is to show what can be built semi-automatically, and where some problems with this will come. This is not comprehensive.
This is really just an exploratory scenario, and not a finished design in any way.
Again, I'm deliberately using low-quality images because I don't want to be implying any "final" design. The point of this is the interaction patterns, not the specific UI (this probably needs to be doable via the shell as well).
The overall theme here is: Do as much 'just in time' system configuration as possible.
1: Unpacking
Raheem's Actions
Raheem unpacks his new Sun Photon Mark I laptop, opens it up and eagerly turns on the power.
Behind the Scenes
The system comes almost ready to use out of the box.
Profile Details
The system comes with one profile by default, the "No Networking" profile.
2: First Use
Raheem's Actions
As the system starts up, Raheem sighs in annoyance. He set up two new systems yesterday and is already bored with the five questions Solaris asks when it first starts up. Dutifully, and a bit resistantly, he fills in information including the language he wants to use, the root password, and time zone. The system then asks him to select a wireless network from those that are available (or to type in the name for one). He picks the first one that he recognizes, enters the WEP key and then continues.
Behind the Scenes
As soon as Solaris came up, it started polling for what network hardware and what networks were available. By the time it got to the network configuration page in the system setup wizard, it had determined that there was no wired network available, but there were wireless ones. It therefore presented the wireless ones as possible choices, and listed the networks in the order of their average strength since the system started (that is, each time it polled for networks, it averaged the strengths of the ones it had found).
The system had also offered a way ("Config Wired" in the diagram) for Raheem to have done more extensive networking configuration if he'd wanted to. But, as already stated, he isn't inclined to do configuration if he doesn't have to.
Somewhere in the UI it probably would have asked a question like: Where are you? and used this information to name this profile. Because Raheem doesn't like doing what he doesn't have to, he would have left it as the default "Initial NetEnvironment"
Profile Details
The system now has two profiles: The "No Networking" one and the "Initial NetEnvironment". The latter has settings for wired and wireless interfaces. In the wireless area, it remembers the name and password of the wireless interface he chose. By default the wireless settings include a strong firewall, no proxies, nor other name services. As soon as Raheem picked the wireless network name, the system verified that it got an IP address and DNS info by DHCP. If it hadn't gotten this, it would have warned him. The system also located an NTP server to set the system time with from these settings. The time zone is probably also part of this profile, not because it is networking related, but because these profiles are the closest thing the system has to automatically determine where it is geographically. (by implication, when laptops start having GPS sensors, they might be used to help pick among profiles as well) I don't think locale things (language, number formats, etc) should be tied to this, however.
3: Checking the Net Works
Raheem's Actions
Raheem starts up GAIM and fills in information for one of his accounts. It connects and shows him his buddies.
Behind the Scenes
Nothing to add
Profile Details
No changes
4: Plugging a Cable In
Raheem's Actions
Satisfied that his laptop basically works, Raheem plugs in an ethernet cable. A notice appears floating in the lower right of the screen that reports "Ethernet cable plugged in. Waiting for network address..." After another few seconds it reports: "Network address received, but some important information is missing." It offers two buttons he could press: Ignore wired network for now or Resolve problems.
Raheem clicks on the "Resolve problems" button. A window appears that reports that no DNS servers can be found, so Raheem copies the addresses from a note on the corner of his whiteboard. Raheem then notices the "Do you need to set proxies?" note at the bottom of the window and clicks on a button there, which lets him then type in proxy information.
Behind the Scenes
While the DHCP system delivered an IP address, it did not deliver DNS information. Solaris had been able to ping a known address on the net in some manner, so it knew there was network "signal", but it also knew that the lack of DNS servers would probably be a big problem. So, it put the notice up for the user. Because there were no proxies in the profile, it realized this might be a problem as well, and included that note in the dialog. As Raheem typed in DNS servers, Solaris verified they existed, and then tried to do a simple HTTP query with a system on the Internet. When that failed, Solaris was more certain that proxies would be needed and so emphasized the warning.
Note that Solaris did not suggest creating a new profile because the wireless network was still working fine, so it assumed he wasn't in a new place. If he'd wanted to, a button in the "resolve problems" dialog would have allowed him to get to the full network configuration interface where he could have done whatever he wanted.
Profile Details
At this point, the profile contains the information about the preferred wireless network and its settings, and the wired network with the hand-specified DNS info and proxies. The wired network also has a firewall turned on, and the wired network takes precedence over the wireless.
5: Checking the network connection
Raheem's Actions
After closing the window, the message in the lower right of the screen went away, and Raheem started his browser up. He was immediately able to get at his favorite website... OpenSolaris!
Behind the Scenes
Note that at this point the browser is using the wired interface while the GAIM is using the wireless.
Profile Details
None to add
6: To Home
Raheem's Actions
Later, Raheem closes the computer (putting it to sleep/hibernation) unplugs it and goes home. There, he plugs it into the wireed [This used to say wireless. That was a typo] network before opening it up/reawaking it. After a moment, a message appears in the lower right: "This computer seems to be in a new place. Setup for this place? Work with no networking? I'm still at 'Initial NetEnvironment'!"
Raheem ignores the failure message from GAIM and clicks on the "Setup for this environment" button. The window that appears asks him to name this environment, which he calls "Home". He ignores the message suggesting that he do other configuration (e.g. wireless) and clicks OK and tells GAIM to reconnect, which it does.
Behind the Scenes
Solaris got an IP address and DNS servers via DHCP. However, this address looked different than the one before, and the DNS servers are very different and the previous ones couldn't be pinged. However, it could ping the known host on the Internet. This looks to Solaris like it has moved to a new location. Thus, it reported the problem and did not put the settings it got from DHCP into effect. When Raheem said to create a new place, however, it created a new profile and put that into effect.
Profile Details
Now, his system has three profiles. The "No Networking", the "Initial NetEnvironment" and "Home" The home one has a profile with settings for the wired interface including a firewall, an NTP server, and a timezone (cloned from the default profile, or perhaps these come from profile lower in the set of layered profiles?). Note: I'm also assuming the profiles keep some memory of the information delivered by DHCP before to help them figure out if they are in a new location.
7: Wandering Around Home
Raheem's Actions
Later, Raheem unplugs the cable and carries the laptop into another room. Almost at once the system reports a message in the lower right: "The Network Cable is gone. Use a wireless network instead? or no networking?" Raheem chooses to use a wireless network. In this case, his home network doesn't broadcast its name, so he types that in and then specifies the WEP key.
Behind the Scenes
When the ethernet cable went away, the system immediately checked if it could find a wireless network to offer instead. It assumed it didn't want to suggest creating a new profile because the loss of the cable was so recent and the system hadn't gone to sleep in the mean time. Of course, as with all these things this might be the wrong assumption, so Raheem is given the chance to override the assumption. And, of course, the assumption may be wrong and Raheem may not override it which means the profile may be "wrong". We'll have to do a scenario where all these profiles have been setup badly and see what kind of a mess that produces.
Profile Details
No new profile is created. Instead, the information about this wireless network is added to the "home" profile.
8: Back into the Office
Raheem's Actions
The next day, Raheem goes back into the office. He opens his computer up, starts to browse. He ignores the small notification in the lower right that tells him he's started using the "Initial NetEnvironment" profile. He realizes he can't see things on the intranet, and so plugs in the ethernet cable, tells the browser to refresh the page and it does so without problems.
Behind the Scenes
Now, of course, is where the various configuration questions earlier begin to pay off. When the computer is opened, it finds the familiar wireless networks, and locates one of them among the profiles. It then switches the profile to use that one. It then notifies the user with a temporary and non-modal notice of its decision (since, in some cases, it may make the wrong choice when it comes to wireless networks). When he then plugs the ethernet cable in, Solaris assumes it is about to use the wired interface, since it has higher priority than the wireless. It gets the info and sees that this is similar to the info it had last time it was using the wired part of this profile. Probably it pings some of the servers to be certain. It then does some steps to verify that everything is OK (it can see the greater internet, can do DHCP lookups, etc). In this case, it doesn't notify the user of the change since it is so confident that this is the right set of settings to use.
Profile Details
No added details.
