Softkeys and screen real-estate

TheGuy200 · 01-28-06, 03:58 PM

Hey all,
Is anyone else annoyed with the screen real-estate that the softkeys suck up in WM5. Is there some way to get rid of those, make them smaller or something, I feel like I have lost 10% of my screen. I looked for a menue setting, but no luck so far.

I can't be the only one this bothers...

Marcello · 01-28-06, 04:20 PM

Doesn't bother me, that amount of space has always been taken up on Pocket PC.

There is no setting to change their size, though it should be theoretically possible to hide/modify them by writing software to do so. I'm not entirely sure that would be a good idea, though. Maybe some kind of 'auto-hide' feature ala desktop pc.

Xcilion · 01-28-06, 04:38 PM

Only thing i can think off is TrueVGA.

TheGuy200 · 01-28-06, 04:45 PM

Well there has always been things at the bottom, it just seems bigger some how, it could be an illusion but I swear it takes up more room. When I compare it to my wife's x30 it is slightly larger, but not that much I guess.

It would be neat if it could hide, like the start bar can in xp

cng · 01-28-06, 04:51 PM

WisBar Advance Desktop is a nice skin plug-in for WisBar Advance and it hides the soft-key. But for ultimate screen real-estate, it would have to be TrueVGA like Xcilion pointed out.

01-28-06, 09:35 PM

It does take up more space since it moves the tray up into what used to be today screen real estate. Real VGA will reduce the impact on your today screen by half, but it is at the expense of some usability. Some programs don't work at all in real VGA mode, and others work poorly. You had also better be near sighted (not a problem for me).

As also noted above Wisbar Advance Deskop plugin for WA2 will hide both the bottom buttons and the tray giving you a lot more space. It is still a bit unstable on my device (doesn't cause crashes, just exits unexpectedly) but each new version is quite a bit better than the last and Chris is constantly developing it, so it is definately worth a look.

SolSie · 01-28-06, 10:47 PM

This is how I visually trick the softkey effect!

NoWire · 01-28-06, 11:05 PM

I believe you can go to Windows/startup and delete the 2 shortcut (BT and Wifi) I believe, and that would eliminate it from showing on the bottom...

01-28-06, 11:13 PM

This will remove the tray but it is a somewhat temporary and problematic fix. Whenever you start a program which puts something in the tray such as Pocket Informant it will reappear with somewhat unpredictable results to the today screen such as overwriting the bottom of a plugin instead of resizing the today screen and adding the scroll bar (but I believe the scroll bar will appear if the today screen is refreshed).

**Forge42** · 01-28-06, 11:41 PM

My solution for the softkey issue is to make them more usable by mapping them to hardware buttons. This dramatically increases their usefulness and the 'one-hand-ability' of my x51v. I find I'm glad that WM5 has the softkeys cause I can do so much w/o ever using my stylus because of them.

cng · 01-29-06, 02:03 AM

For a PDA, one handed operations are not that important and I rather get the screen space.

Li0rE · 01-29-06, 10:08 AM

well, it depends who you are. I dont have a screen protector, so no one handed operation for me.

**Forge42** · 01-29-06, 10:16 PM

I think the one handed operation is pretty nice. For me, the key was to map the softkeys to hardware buttons and to change the default softkeys on the today screen using a hack I found somewhere on aximsite. I changed my default softkeys to the cascading startmenu and the wisbar task manager. Makes it much easier to navigate just about everything one handed. I can manage my mp3 player, switch to a map, and pull up contact info one handed. All nice to do while in the car. To me, that is more important that 20 pixels of vertical space.