>>Why not allow a user set up option to use different styles of such "features"? Then capture what each user selects and how often. You can then know who likes what and which approach is used most often. After all we are interested in handling data. :) One of the user selections could be "Random" and could just mix up the controls in any order it pleases.
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>That's too much work. I already built a whole slew of system Preferences (color, font, sizing, etc) and virtually no one uses it, I already found that out. I don't reckon this would be any different...

Bruce;

That has also been our experience. Users ask for n items and use (for the most part) zero.

Often we get corporate projects that are very demanding for Intranet web applications or pages. We began tracing who uses them. It turned out that developers were looking and users were not. Gives you a warm feeling after you break your back to meet a deadline that the user does not access the application or page. Such is life! :)

Tom