Currently, firewall-config has a user interface centered around zones, the only prominent zone-related action is to change the default zone. It turns out that zones are configured by Network Manager. The firewall-config UI should either be able to make API calls to network manager to make these changes natively, or should have a button and menu item to launch that configuration. It should also list the interfaces/networks associated with a zone in the UI, even if they can't be changed there. Honestly, I think this alone will cure 90% of the scariness of the GUI. :) (Also, the network-manager interface should, if it does not, list interfaces which are not under its control and provide a hint that those need to be zone-ified externally.)
I am working on a left button menu for the applet to call nm-connection-editor that has support for zones upstream already. I will also add a generic button for this to firewall-config.
Fixed in GIT: http://git.fedorahosted.org/cgit/firewalld.git/commit/?id=534120c0b1f8d24778a499512a12004d7bc25562 firewall-applet: Zones can be changed now using nm-connection-editor - Only available if nm-connection-editor is available - New left menu: Change of zone of a connection directly - New item in right menu to be able change the zone in general
firewalld-0.2.11-1.fc18 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 18. https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/firewalld-0.2.11-1.fc18
Package firewalld-0.2.11-1.fc18: * should fix your issue, * was pushed to the Fedora 18 testing repository, * should be available at your local mirror within two days. Update it with: # su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing firewalld-0.2.11-1.fc18' as soon as you are able to. Please go to the following url: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-20206/firewalld-0.2.11-1.fc18 then log in and leave karma (feedback).
(In reply to comment #2) > firewall-applet: Zones can be changed now using nm-connection-editor In KDE the Network Connection Control Module can be started via 'kcmshell4 kcm_networkmanagement' so we could possibly run that if nm-connection-editor is not available. The module availability discovery is a little tricky. I haven't any better idea than checking whether /usr/lib[64]/kde4/kcm_networkmanagement.so exists.
firewalld-0.2.12-1.fc18 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 18. https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/firewalld-0.2.12-1.fc18
firewalld-0.2.12-1.fc18 has been pushed to the Fedora 18 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.