Tuesday, July 15, 2008

HTC Touch Diamond - Customizing Soft Keys

Thanks mooooooa (Crtsy:Xda Developers Forum)

Well the Left Soft Key  - on the home screen - PHONE - is pretty pointless - in my view. You can access the same by using the Phone Hard Key.

I found the Registry entry to customize the Soft Keys on the home screen, so just thought of sharing it. In case someone may be interested.

In a registry editor, go to HKLM/Software/HTC/manila/. The keys you are looking for are:

  • HomeLSKPath
  • HomeRSKPath

Here, you can put up the path to the application you want the Soft Keys to access. Eg. I have set mine to Camera and Contacts. The paths for those are:

  • \Windows\Camera.exe
  • \Windows\Start Menu\Contacts.lnk

After defining the path, you should also modify the HomeLSKText and HomeRSKText entries, to display the relevant labels for the Soft Keys.

Restart the Diamond and that's it. Done.

8 Opinions:

Unknown said...

Are you making a new phone or what?

L o r d R a j said...

lol!!

arrey yaar.. It's a windows mobile.

So you see, the bad part is.. that it runs on windows (I really don't need to explain why that's bad). The good part is... That it runs on windows ;)

See, you can tweak it.. change registry entries, put in a few hacks.. and with a bit of effort, make it do what you would like it to do.

Just a bit of customization here and there.

Time pass

Anonymous said...

I've located the keys in Manila folder but have no idea how to change the path. What do you do then - change the value or the sting or what? Thanks!

L o r d R a j said...

Alex

This should be more descriptive (I hope)

Here we go:

In the Reg Editor: What you Should be seeing under the NAME column is

HashPaths
HomeLSKArgument
HomeLSKPath
HomeLSKText
HomeRSKArgument
HomeRSKPath
HomeRSKText
Style
Version

If that is not what you see, then check again and navigate to the right place. If that IS what you see, then you are in the correct place, read on:

Now, HomeRSKPath - Tap on that. You will see Value data: over there enter the path.(Eg. Contacts)

The path should be \ (not '/')

Windows\Start Menu\Contacts.lnk (that's LNK as in extension for LINK)
(I believe these would be case sensitive, not sure, but hey, what's the harm, right )

If you WANT to be sure of the path, use File Explorer and go to that place and see if the file you are linking to, is actually there and see how it is spelt.

Also see how the containing folder(s) are spelt (in this case, Windows and Start Menu)

Of course.. once you get this done, you also Tap on Ok. You should be back to the Reg Editor screen.

Right below HomeRSKPath, you will see HomeRSKText.

Tap on that now

in the Value Data: type Address Book or Contacts.

That done, Soft Reset.

All the best, mate

Anonymous said...

This is great help! It works perfectly now. They should really make it easier for people to customise their shortcuts as we want them. Thanks very much for talking me through it.
Cheers!

L o r d R a j said...

Alex

Happy to help :)

About making it easier.. you said it!

Hopefully the updated ROM (official) would be better. If not, well, there are tons of cooked roms..

Can't wait to see how the Touch Pro turns out.

Take care mate.

Unknown said...

forgive me for being really un-techy, but can someone please tell me how to get into a registry editor for the HTC diamond?

Do I have to download something, or is it already in the phone?

Cheers

L o r d R a j said...

Hi Bertie,

you do need a software. there are plenty available. one of them that I use(d) is ' PHM Registry Editor'

Here is the link.

http://www.phm.lu/Products/PocketPC/RegEdit/

I THINK this should help. There are other posts on my blog, where I have given another link for the software, but I just checked and it seems that link has expired. The one above should help.

All the best. bertie

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