Hello everyone! I'm a new N810 user. I use pidgin for chat, skype for voice and a web based mail client. I don't need the contacts menu on the task navigator for anything. Is there any way to get rid of it to make room for more applications below?

Are there any task navigator plug-ins available in general to replace the contacts menu? I tried searching but my tablet-fu is too weak for now...

Sure. In /home/user/.osso/hildon-desktop you'll find a bunch of configuration files which control the look and feel of the hildon desktop.
In the file tasknavigator.conf you can enable or disable single items of the task navigator.

I would recommend to do a backup of each file you are editing and to install an ssh server before changing anything. Then you'll still be able to access the device and restore the settings, in case you screw up the config files and the application menu suddenly disappears.

I just did that and lo and behold the contacts menu is still there. Even after rebooting.

I wanted to do the same on the N800 and OS2008. I got exactly the same behaviour editing tasknavigator.conf: setting X-Load to false didn't help, neither did deleting the entry from the file. Similar results with the bookmarks menu. Reordering does work though.

There seemed to be something hard coded which would revert to a default configuration if it sees something it doesn't like.

After a lot of frustration a line in desktop.conf caught my eye:

I commented out that line (insert # at start) and rebooted. Now when I edit tasknavigator.conf it will allow the contacts and the bookmark menu to be deleted.

The task switcher however is no longer in the corner. Not worked out how to fix that.

SHENSON (or anyone else): made any further discoveries on this topic? I'm curious to learn if you have... Thx.

Install Personal Menu, which is kind of a quick launch from the menu on the left side of the screen. Since you can only have 3 menu/launchers, you need to disable on of the default menus for Personal Menu to work. All you need to do is simply uncheck Contacts and check Personal Menu.

Thanks, Nelson. I'm already a big fan/user of Personal Menu. It's worked so well, I don't need 3 button in the Task Navigator, only 2 (or even 1).

Quite a few folks posted here about modding desktop.conf to remove Task Navigator buttons, but doing so also requires modding Task Switcher to make use of the newly freed up screen real-estate.

Has anyone been successful yet at doing that (modding Task Switcher)?

Application Title bars seemed to have a fixed length (limiting the number of applets displayed) as well as your issue of not being able to remove the contacts menu (I had the same issue). While I'm sure there are files that can be modified, instead you may choose to install Personal Menu (and then you can disable the contacts menu). While Hildon+matchbox are convenient for day to day use, sometimes a window manager like XFCE are nice to have and you may want to try 'EasyDebian Turbo-charged' slow but usable. Or even install full-on Deblet/other distro.

EDIT: Beaten to the punch.