Doug Way wrote:
> 
> Jesse Welton wrote:
> >
> > I have been thinking about putting together a brief introduction to
> > the preferences, hitting on the most important/commonly used items.  I
> > can't guarantee that I will have time to do this, but if people think
> > it's useful enough I could push it toward the top of my stack.
> > Suggestions for which preferences to include?
> >
> >         inboardScrollBars
> >         scrollBarsOnRight
> >         annotationPanes
> >         optionalButtons
> >         noviceMode?
> 
> Those sound good.  I would keep it to a pretty short list, mentioning only the preferences that would be very noticeable to a newcomer.  The only other ones you might mention would maybe be balloonHelpEnabled and useGlobalFlaps, although even those could just be mentioned in passing at the end of your intro. (and possibly browseWithPrettyPrint, if you wanted)

(Sorry for replying to my own email)  I meant to add that I think mentioning just a few preferences in the intro is okay, since the intro will lead people to poke around in the preferences panel and find other stuff.  (For example, if they know about the inboardScrollBars preference in the "scrolling" tab, they'll notice the scrollBarsNarrow preference there too, etc.)

Anyway, I think this preferences intro would be a worthy addition to the out-of-the-box image, either as part of a larger intro text, or in its own little window.

- Doug Way
  dway at riskmetrics.com