Restore Calendar Hard Button Functionality to Your Palm T|X

Disappointed that your new Palm T|X's "Home" button can't be configured to launch any application, as it has for every previous Palm model?

ButtonsEx is a free utility (donation requested) by Pierre-Yves Tavernier to customize the "hard buttons" and the 5-way controller buttons on the Palm T5, LifeDrive, T|X and Tungsten E2.

How ButtonsEx Fixed SmartLauncher on my Palm T\X

For many years, I've used SmartLauncher software on various Palm Tungstens to
launch my favorite apps with just a couple of presses of the "hard buttons". So it was quite a shock when I discovered that the new Palm T|X's leftmost hard button (by default, the "Calendar" button in previous Palm models) is now the "Home" button, which can only be configured to launch either the Application Viewer or Favorites. This denied my configuring SmartLauncher to utilize this button, thus halving the number of two-button combinations (SmartLauncher can actually do three-button launching, providing hundreds of combinations - but I'm happy with the 24 apps I can launch with two-button mode). I find this change by Palm pretty bizarre - why alienate existing Palm users instead of adding Home as a Button configuration option?

Other hard-button launchers for Palm exist which can work around the Palm T|X home button, including TealPoint Software's TealLaunch and Ranosoft's HBX. I liked HBX very much - it is quick, simple and I like the full-color icon panel it pops up to remind you after the first button press which applications are assigned to the second press. As one of the first Palm launchers, TealLaunch remains not only incredibly awkward and clunky, but stupidly only allows two-button launching of unique pairs of buttons, and does not allow using the same button pressed twice. So for instance, instead of 16 combinations of 4 buttons:

• 1+1, 1+2, 1+3, 1+4, 2+1, 2+2, 2+3, 2+4, 3+1, 3+2, 3+3, 3+4, 4+1, 4+2, 4+3, 4+4

TealLaunch can only do six:

• 1+2, 1+3, 1+4, 2+3, 2+4, 3+4

Really strange.

TealLaunch is very elaborate, and allows launching with pen strokes and Graffiti characters, plus combinations of hard buttons and strokes, but I like my multi-button launching, so as I did many years ago, I passed on TealLaunch.

While reviewing which launcher I was going to buy (you can really nickel and dime yourself into some big numbers buying $15 Palm software), I discovered ButtonEx, and now I can continue to use SmartLauncher. SmartLauncher used to be free, but now appears only available from major Palm software sites as a $10 purchase. Its website no longer exists, so I see no evidence of the original developer - too bad.