signal strength bar do not look like the theme's standard progress bar

Ok I am sort of confused with the problem here. I do notice the difference in bars do not get me wrong, but the the screenshots are exactly the same otherwise, so is the second picture not also the nm-applet? Did you do anything differently to make it appear correctly?

I can duplicate this by using clearlooks (and a few others), my bars look like your first screenshot. It's certainly a very cosmetic thing, which may not be exclusive to nm-applet either.

 Please let me know what you did to make it look like the second screenshot.

"Please let me know what you did to make it look like the second screenshot"

Er, it's just a mockup I gimped using some other application's bars.

I have never seen anything like that anywhere else but the NM-applet. I have also noticed that, when using the Human GTK theme, the bars look "engraved" inside the menu instead of on top of it... not sure if I'm making it clear, please tell me if you don't get what I mean and I'll try to reelaborate.

The thing is, I haven't seen that "engraved" effect anywhere else either, so I'm quite sure they must be related.

I completely understand what you are saying, it was the edited screenshot that was throwing me off because it looked like you had somehow corrected the problem. I will confirm this because I can duplicate it myself by changing my theme to clearlooks.

Steps to Duplicate:

1) Change theme to clearlooks
       a) System > Preferences > Theme
2) Click on the nm-applet

Expected Result:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5366/pantallazo1ea7.png

Actual Result:

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/8260/pantallazo1copiaxz2.png

this is wont fix unless you cannot influence its appearance through standard theming means.

Actually, this was seemingly fixed in NM 0.7.