Curiousity in a wireless network skin

[Wrathos]

I was wondering are there any skins that show you the availible wireless networks around you and will allow you to connect to them?

[Chewtoy]

There are those that will display the available networks, but none (that I know of) that will connect to them with a simple click. Don't even think that's possible without some plugin/external app of some sort.
The only skin I really know lists the WLANs in range is Minst.

[Wrathos]

Alright wonder that the command windows uses to connect to a network if we knew that it would (i think) be simple to make a command in a rainmeter skin to connect to it when something is clicked

[moxlon69]

This technique should work with any version of Windows that comes with the netsh executable. (xp, vista, windows 7, etc). I just tested it on Windows 7 x64, also note that I did not try to connect to a network that I have not previously connected to (ie: the networks I've connected to are already in my network profiles, so the key is already saved).

from the command prompt, type:

netsh wlan show interfaces
Lists your wlan interfaces, generally unnecessary since most end users have only one.

netsh wlan show profiles
Lists available wlan profiles (networks that you have connected to previously)

netsh wlan connect profilename ssid=Network_SSID (interface=Interface_ID)
This will connect to the specified wireless network. In most cases, profile and ssid are the same under windows, and interface is only needed when you have more than one wlan adapter on the computer in question.

If I wanted to connect to a network called Linksys for example, and have connected to it previously,
I can enter netsh wlan connect Linksys ssid=Linksys and this will connect me to the Linksys network.

Again, I have not tried this with a network that I have not previously accessed, I assume that windows will just prompt you for a password, but at present I can't confirm this. Hope this helps someone.

EDIT:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755301(WS.10).aspx is a good reference for the netsh command.

Also, if you do a search for wlsample you will find a utility (source included for you programmers), that I understand was released by microsoft a while back, that will let you connect to networks without preexisting profiles. My understanding is that it is only compatible with vista and newer (tested it in W7). If you dump and store the GUID of your Wireless lan adapter, you could write a script to use this utility to connect to a wifi network without having the preexisting profile, but you need to specify if it's a secured or unsecured network, and will still have to follow the windows prompt to input the password. From my understanding of how the utility works, using this method will not save the profile, and thus will not save the network password.

Hope some of this was helpful, I know my post is rather late from the date of the OP.

[Chewtoy]

That is some really good information I must say.
We need a way to separate the WIFIs found so we can pass them to the !Bang and so make it a 'one-click-connect' though. But it's good info never the less.
If you already know what network you are going to connect to it's great.