A new app over at XDA allows users of Spb Mobile Shell 3.5 to customize both the look and number of icons in the Launcher bar in both the Professional and Lifestyle screens. This is a huge mod for many of us, as you can customize so much of Spb Mobile Shell but not those two ugly buttons at the bottom (at least not without some registry hacks).

This new app, called ShellExtension, also allows you to add or remove panels from the Spb Mobile Shell 3.5 carousel, with up to 10 panels. The full list of features is:

• Auto detect of spb version 3.0.1 and 3.5 (extra functions for the 3.5 version)
• Change the number of menu buttons for both (Pro and Life) and their functions
• Change the number of menu buttons to 0, 2 or 3 (With 0 buttons you can put widgets on the menubar.
• Changeable functions: Launcher, SPB Menu, Favorite Contacts, Weather, Weather conditions, Agenda, Time, Profile, Task manager, Wireless manager, Phone Profile, Backlight, Call logs, SPB Contacts, Contact carousel, Today, Lifestyle and Professional Home
• The Launcher V35 and Contacts V35 are still changeable by the SPB menu
• Change or remove the text of the buttons
• Local versions of SPB Shell retrieves the correct local button text (if not changed by the user)
• If you know the right number for a menu icon, you can change that too
• Change the number of Lifestyle and Professional screens from 0 to 10
• Change the number of Fav. Contact screens from 1 to 10 (if 1 is selected the left and right functions are functional)
• Full control over your carousel screens, remove screens you don’t want and/or add (Task manager, Wireless manager not in SPB version 3.5 , Profile manager and Backlight)
• Change the text to your own text of these carousel screens
• Add or remove the menu bar with “back” button for Task and Profile manager
• Add or remove the recycling bin in the edit menus
• Program text in (English, French, Greek and Dutch) according to you SPB shell language
• Easy updating qa_layouts.dat with your own manipulated xml files
• Make the folders editable or removable (Extra buttons)
• Change the dialer contacts button to your choice
• After the changes, ShellExtension restarts the shell automatically

To install ShellExtension for Spb Mobile Shell 3.5:

1. download ShellExtension from XDA
2. unzip the two files and place them somewhere on your Windows Mobile device
3. run ShellExtension

If you need to uninstall you’ll have to check the thread for instructions. Enjoy! And please let me know what you think!