Version:            (using KDE 4.3.2)
Installed from:    I Don't Know

So I find it really helpful that Kopete uses Solid to detect connectivity, but I think it would really make a more unified experience if all applications could be made more useful by this feature:

Konqueror would show, "Desktop offline: Check your internet connection" when Solid detects no internet connection, and possibly go automatically into offline mode. When the server's unavailable but the desktop's online, it should give the usual warnings such as checking whether the address is typed correctly or whether the firewall is blocking it.
Kontact would prevent automatic checking of E-mail and syncing with online calendars etc. when the desktop is offline, and would complain about the desktop being offline when trying to manually check E-mail or trying to sync with online calendars (This would obviously be applied to the individual applications rather then the Kontact client, such as KMail and KOrganizer).
Plasma would announce to widgets whether the desktop is online or offline, and the plasma widgets would create a connection or refresh the connection. This would fix such problems as the RememberTheMilk plasmoid not connecting if it tries before the computer is connected to the internet.
Marble would automatically switch to offline mode when Solid reports that there is no internet connection. This would apply to Marble's plasma plug-ins as well.
GHNS would tell the user that the desktop is in offline-mode, and that they need an internet connection to download and install new content.
KPackageKit would complain that the desktop is offline as well, and that it is displaying the information in read-only mode. The user would be able to change this via the settings tab.
The Printer configuration dialogue would grey-out the, "new network printer" option with a message that the desktop is offline. Pre-configured network printers would also be greyed out.
Amarok would use Solid to check whether the network's available and would display network alerts in its applicable widgets.
(make some more suggestions for different applications, and I'll put them up here).

Of course, if you weren't using Wicd, NetworkManager or some other mystical networking tool I've never heard of that KDE provides a back-end for, you would still be able to go to, "Hardware" in System Settings and select, "Fake net", which would tell the desktop that it is always online. This would allow power-users to configure the network directly with tools such as wpa_supplicant and ifconfig without worrying about KDE complaining at every corner about their network.

Personally, I think it might be more effective to have a single, "team" going around the different applications and applying this in a consistent fashion for e.g. KDE 4.5. However, each application may require a more in-depth knowledge of its own, current error handling (Konqueror's network error is entirely different to KMail's, for example), which may require instead for the individual application teams to implement it, since a single, general, "team" may not know enough about each individual application's error handling to implement it.



This feature request was originally submitted through KDE Brainstorm, and has been submitted to Bugzilla due to popular demand. Original idea: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php?mode=idea&i=79851