-9

If any network-requiring widget is on your desktop, and you do not have internet access (e.g. when using a laptop), currently that widget is ugly and does not provide any functionality.

I propose hiding those widgets, letting them reappear as soon as a network connection has been established. When adding new widgets, they should because visible, but a bit faded, to make clear they are still there, but do not work.

This way you can put a dictionary widget (or comic widget, etc.) on your desktop, and only see and use it when you are connected to the internet.

I disagree with this, because some widgets - like the comic widget - cache the information to make it visible offline.

I think they should only connect/refresh their information when an internet connection is detected, though. That could be done through Solid.

This could be beneficial, but I don't think it should be an automatic process mainly for the reason Madman already pointed out.

IMO, the way to do this would be to modify the specific applets to adapt to the environment. The same way they behave differently when placed onto the desktop compared to the ones on the panel, they could behave differently depending on the network connection.

"currently that widget is ugly and does not provide any functionality." <-- I think the author is saying that the mere existence of a widget that doesn't do anything is what the problem is - not just a simple case of having the widget display a friendly error message.

Nepomuk-driven plasma activities are already in the works - would it be possible to do something similar, albeit simpler, with Solid?

Ok, maybe the comic widget is a wrong example. But the point I'm trying to make is that widgets which do not function without internet currently display an error message, but I'd think hiding would be better, maybe accompanied by a notification saying it is hidden.

Solid-driven plasma activities sound like a good solution, along with simply hiding widgets.

First, I agree that the error message of no network is not helpful, and sometimes disturbing the widget's action (graying out a cached comics, for example). And I think sometimes hiding the widgets is helpful, not only having them behave differently when there's no connection.

I stress that this should be optional (per activity I guess) for 2 possibilities - 1) When using a desktop connected wirelessly, it would be most annoying to have widgets disappear every time the network disconnects, then reappear and reconnect. It would take system resources, and in this case the error message is an indication that there's no connection.
2) When roaming wireless networks with a laptop - useless to hide and show repeatedly, as in 1).
In these cases, disabling updates from network is enough.

perhaps not hiding but somewhat shrinking to an icon or fading to almost transparent, for example I had for long time a weather plasmoid but for some reason it didn't update regularly and so it became unreliable.