so, you're saying if we want to get rid of the more or less
pointless contact button we have to either become a
developer or find one (hire one) who knows hildon ...

I'm with TZ1 - I just want to know what file to edit
or erase to get rid of the contact button!

(I think we all knew that if you got deeply into the
system it would be possible to reprogram it to change
the GUI ...)

And I'm saying it's probably possible.

It's hardly my fault that you think the contact button is useless or that there's nothing with which you can replace it. I've explained the situation as it is. If you "just" want to know what to do, raise a bug in Bugzilla.

Sitting back and complaining about explanations being too complex and you "just want to know what file to edit or erase" isn't particularly helpful. Do you really want to erase things without understanding the impact? If so, I'd suggest as root:

I guarantee that will result in the "useless" contacts button being got rid of. Personally, it's what I usually use to open the IM client. YMMV.

I think the complaint was that the reply was obvious.
Of course, if the software is re-engineered then the
contact button can be got rid of. Everyone on this
forum knows this already.

If you are saying that, the *only* way to get rid
of the contact button is to rewrite some core software
on the table, then that's OK.

Too bad though.

You're still missing my point: the task navigator is designed to have that removed/replaced. As you say, if you rewrote everything from scratch, you could have it any way you wanted.

I don't use the bookmarks or contacts much either.

I did some experiments and got the entries to delete but the task switcher doesn't expand and gets confused.

If you look in .osso/hildon-desktop/tasknavigator.conf it lists the items. If you edit the file to set for the relavent button nothing seems to happen.

It looks like there is a sanity check which stops changes and resorts to a hard coded default. If you look in desktop.conf and comment out the line: (you may have to reboot afterwards) you can then disable the buttons.

Then changing tasknavigator.conf has an immediate (or almost immediate) effect but with the side effect that the task swicther doesn't like it.

Anyone know how to get task switcher to behave after the change e.g. tell it the new height in a config entry?

More info on the Task Navigator plugins:

http://maemo.org/development/documen...igator-plugins

Thanks for the link... I have already (temporarily) deleted both the bookmarks and contact buttons. Just to see what would happen. Still exploring, but that's definitely documentation I had been (passively) wanting to see.

The rather interesting result is that I now have 1 blank button and two instances of the main menu...

I'm also curious how to remove an unneeded icon from the Task Navigator (leaving only 2 icons). Anyone been able to do this?