OpenSUSE Wireless :: How Is NetworkManager Supposed To Work?

I'm finding the NetworkManager applet very confusing.When I start up at a new location I can use the "Connect to Other Network..." menu item to bring up the list of available networks, and I'd expect that by selecting one of these and clicking "Connect", then configuring and clicking OK, I'd get a connection. Instead the dialog just goes away and nothing else happens. Is something broken with NetworkManager, or am I misunderstanding how this is supposed to work?

By switching back and forth between NetworkManager and ifup I'm eventually able to establish a connection to a new access point, but it's been a painful process.I've also encountered a problem reported by others, where when my system fails to suspend/resume properly the /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state has NetworkingEnabled=false and I need to manually edit this before restarting networking... but that's a separate issue, and I can work around it with the manual edit (or just add a startup script to do this automatically).