Currently, two ways exist to make changes in Preferences: "piecemeal" by entering Preferences and making a change, or "globally" with backup and restore. I would like to begin a conversation and suggest possibilities between these two ends of the continuum, piecemeal and global.
The problem with piecemeal change is that it is time consuming to go in and out of every "page" in Preferences. Preferences has 138 pages, and at a guessed average of eight items per page, that is a total of some 1,000 items in Preferences to consider. Granted, any particular user might be interested in only some of those 138. Also, it is difficult to get a sense of all the possibilities or the lay of the land when seeing a limited number at any one time.
The problem with global change is a user does not know in advance what is going to be changed. It is a leap and a scary one. This is evidenced by how infrequently users restore other users' setups. After the leap, a user still doesn't easily know what was changed. A user might remember a few settings important to her and check the status after a restore. More frequent and scary is a change the user doesn't know about, does not want, and doesn't catch until later, and then doesn't realize a restore two weeks earlier caused it.
I imagine a four step process of development over time to improve upon these problems.
First, I would like the data in Preferences to be exported out of Preferences. I think a user ought to know all her preferences at one time in one place in the form of something like an excel spread sheet of: preference label, default state and current state.
For example, the data for the "page" Viewer - Standalone Viewer - Slideshow:
Preferences Label Default Current
Automatic slide show Unchecked Unchecked
Randomize slide show Unchecked Unchecked
Slideshow speed (seconds) 10.0 10.0
This would be done for each "page" in Preferences - Viewer, and all other pages. The pages in the sheet could be collapsed and expanded, as is now the case in Preferences. For each page in the sheet, Help/F1 could be called to open a web page for descriptions and explanations of the items on the page, as is now the case in Preferences.
I imagine a user scrolling down the rows of the sheet quickly seeing the state of important items and confirming their state, seeing unimportant items, and seeing some that deserve more attention after scrolling around.
Second, I would like the user to be able to change the preferences in a default sheet and import all of them, globally, back into Preferences applying the global state of the new/changed sheet. The user also ought to be able to call up a sheet with the default values of an install, make some changes, and import that sheet.
Third, I would like the user to be able to change the preferences on one or more pages of the sheet and import just those changed pages back into Preferences applying just those selected changed pages.
Fourth, it might turn out a user would have a set of sheets and/or a set of changed pages and apply them for various purposes. A sheet or pages(s) would have a name which could be called up and applied with a button, context menu or hotkey. This would be analogous to the current organization for Themes where a user can have a number of Themes and apply various ones at various times.
This structure would facilitate exchange of sheets or pages, and greater knowledge of useful Preferences and Preference sets.