I've attempted to assign a hotspot to an application (everything to the right of the help item n the menu bar).

This works except for one problem. It looks like NS uses the task name to associated the hotspot. Once the task name changes, NS can't find the application.

I've got a couple apps that change the task name as you use them: xplorer2 (a windows filemanager) has its task name as xplorer2 followed by whatever directory you're working on.

Also the web browser Opera's taskname is the webpage followed by "Opera".

Is there a way to have NS match on a task name prefix and suffix rather than the full task name?

Disable the 'Exact Match' option for that hotspot in the 'Apply Hotspot to' section.

Thanks, Jorge