Expert Roundup: The one WM hack or tweak that I can't live without!

Our Expert Roundup topic of the month for March is all about the tweaks and hacks--ways to improve your WM experience through clever use of the settings, and options in WM, or going even deeper into the murky depths of the registry. Specifically, we're gonna drill down on the one favorite Windows Mobile hack (or tweak) that we can't do without. For me it's a simple registry tweak that changes the default soft-keys in WM 5 to be able to launch applications of my choosing--note the softkeys above (MemMaid and Internet). These are edits that you can also do yourself (using a WM registry editor, of course) with a little registry know-how. I use the built-in editor that comes with MemMaid myself, but there are freebies lying around everywhere on the internet. Click the title of this post to get the reg hack down-low from the XDA developers web site (and some examples to get you started). Course, you don't have to do any scary reg tweaks, or hack anything if you don't want to. You can go get Tweaks2K2 or a similar tweaker program that will perform the reg tweaking for you. Our experts will be sharing their favorite tweaks as well, so make sure you stay tuned to our blog over the next few days...Read on for the rest of the softkey hack.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Using a registry editor on your device is not for the feint of heart. You can easily turn your device into a useless piece of junk (at least until you hard reset it) by editing the wrong thing in the registry, so continue at your own risk... I will not be held responsible for any damage done by you incorrectly (or correctly) running these procedures. WARNING CONCLUDED!

So, after you have a suitable registry editor loaded, either on your device or on your desktop (connected via A/S), first you have to open up the right reg key. The ones to change the softkey assignments are located here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today\Keys\

The registry works much like a file system tree view, so to navigate, just keep expanding the "folder" levels until you get down to the key required.

On a WM5 Pocket PC device, the softkey registry keys are defined as follows:

Left Softkey: 112
Right Softkey: 113

The softkeys can be changed by editing\creating the following registry key values for each (both keys 112, and 113 if you want to tweak both). Under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Today\Keys\112(3) keys will be a string and a value entry for each, like thus:

String (Default), Value: MemMaid

The value of the string is the name of the program you wish to add (MemMaid in my case). The second String object there (Open) should have an exact value to the path of the program executeable, like thus:

String Open, Value: path to the program (e.g. \)

Repeat for the right softkey, and you're done! Soft reset your device and note that you can now launch the program or setting of your choosing directly from the softkeys on the Today screen. If the program doesn't launch, you likely put in the wrong path, so check and make sure it is correct. Not too shabby, eh?

Remember to come back this week/next and look for the other expert posts on this subject to pick up more great tweaks, and please add comments and share your own hacks and tweaks as well. And don't forget that each month on the 1st, we will be doing a new expert roundup topic, so stay tuned! After everyone has posted, I'll go back and post a summary with the highlights.