Tailoring Home Screen

Home screen tailoring is quick and easy.  On the right, you can see what I use as my default home screen.  The homes screens are all stored in "\Application Data\Home" and the files are called <name>.home.xml.  I cloned pocketmsn.home.xml and called it JamesRH.home.xml and made my edits there.  Each x.home.xml file is just a series of plug-ins each of which "owns" a horizontal slice of the screen.  The standard plugins are documented at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnppcgen/html/sp02homescreen.asp.  

To change the most recently used program display across the top of the screen from to small icons, I changed the XML for that plug-in to read:

<plugin clsid="{79EFB752-CB70-446d-B317-499723482B3D}" icon-size="16" name="startmru" height="30">
        <mru y="2" icon-size="16"/>
</plugin>

I like to have my name, email address, and phone number on the front in case I lose or misplace the device.  To do that, I inserted the following XML:

<plugin file="sysplug.dll" clsid="{4824B576-EFFE-45cf-BAE9-649B930CD244}" height="40">
        <background>
                <format state="selected" bgcolor="#2A2CC5"/>
        </background>
        <label>
                <text><name/> <phone/> <email/></text>
        </label>
</plugin>

Smartphones are battery hungry so I wanted a more precise display of the battery state.  I found a great plugin for this at: http://www.modaco.com/NEW_PLUGIN_Batplug_029_New_Version_Updated-t115099.html.  Install that plugin and add the following XML to your .home.xml file:

<plugin clsid="{13091997-1512-2103-3005-197719802002}" name="Battery Usage" height="50" refresh="600" marge_left="4" marge_right="3">
<skin x="0" y="0" selected="\Application Data\Home\skin.bmp" unselected="\Application Data\Home\skin.bmp"/>
<state x="0" y="14" selected="\Application Data\Home\charge.bmp" unselected="\Application Data\Home\charge.bmp"/>
<time x="35" y="15" format="d h m" font-size="25" font-weight="bold"/>
<percent x="140" y="15" font-size="25" font-weight="bold"/>
</plugin>

To show unread email, SMS, and Vmail, use the following:

                    <plugin clsid="{2F930BF0-6FE9-4a53-9E17-88E9247BAB48}" name="msgcount" height="20">
                            <background>
                                    <format state="selected" bgcolor="COLOR_HOMEHIGHLIGHT"/>
                            </background>
                            <label>
                                    <text lang="0x0409">Email(<unreadEmail/>), SMS(<unreadSMS/>), Vmail(<unreadVMail/>)</text>
                            </label>
                    </plugin>

For registry editor, I recommend PHM Registry Editor.  If you can't install it, see the unlocking section.

Last updated: 2007.03.26