2.11.14 Advanced Topic: Global Options for the Front End

In the standard notebook front end, Mathematica allows you to set a large number of global options. The values of all these options are by default saved in a "preferences file", and are automatically reused when you run Mathematica again.

style definitions	default style definitions to use for new notebooks
file locations	directories for finding notebooks and system files
data export options	how to export data in various formats
character encoding options	how to encode special characters
language options	what language to use for text
message options	how to handle messages generated by Mathematica
menu settings	items displayed in modifiable menus
dialog settings	choices made in dialog boxes
system configuration	private options for specific computer systems

As discussed in Section 2.11.4, you can access global front end options from the kernel by using Options[$FrontEnd, name]. But more often, you will want to access these options interactively using the Option Inspector in the front end.