As of yet there is no way to do it just with a setting on the POD itself, it sounds like you have figured something out. This is a feature request I put in a long time ago and I think I have echoed it a few times in these forums in various threads.  I still think it would as a whole meet some needs of various users but personally I have come around to the way the unit is set up.  I previously had an M13 and ran that with a mini amp gizmo into a Mark V amp.  With 12 FS's I had 12 sounds readily available that I could access with a single stomp.  So moving to the HD500 provided me with some challenges as I needed a new way of thinking.  I soon figured out that I could in fact have 20 sounds readily available at my feet without switching banks, the 4 core bread and butter sounds and then 4 more options on each of those making a total of 5 sounds per preset.  I've just gotten used to it, I try to keep similar variations in similar places for example if I am going to add drive to the preset its always FS1, all modulation variations go on FS2, all delay variations go on FS3 and boosts for solo's go on FS4.  I have preset D or FS8 set to my favourite solo sound so that I can just access it no matter what patch I am on.  I can get through 90% of the show no matter what band I am playing in with these core patches, without having to change banks, I do have a few specialty patches set up in other banks for specific songs that require something unique. Having said all that I can't say that I wouldn't utilize an 8 preset format if it were to become available, and I haven't messed around with the FS1-8 mode much to see what I could do, and that is an interesting idea with the midi, although as you say it would be cumbersome and time consuming to set up when this could be much easier with a firmware change.  Hopefully we'll see something along these lines.  In the meantime my current method of operation is serving me well.  When I thought about breaking it down into clean, blues and rock tones on the 3 patches with number 4 as the go to solo patch it wasn't hard to achieve all my needed tones.

I respectfully agree with both, litesnsirens and wonna221. Additional accessible footswitch presets would greatly increase my work, but it also wouldn't hurt to boost my knowledge in the field of effects by trying something different.