1) OK - but Zotero already selects your default style in the dialogue when you insert your first citation (at least in Ooo it does) so basically all this does is save one click or one press on return - on the downside you'd have to go into the preferences every time you'd want to write in a different style. So not sure I like this.

2) Wouldn't it make more sense to allow selecting multiple citations at once in the plugin? Going back between Word and Zotero seems clumsy. (my understanding would also be that the plugin is the only part of Zotero that actually "talks" to the word processor - which might have the advantage of allowing Zotero to be compatible with different word processors - I'm guessing a little here).
So very much yes to the idea of selecting multiple references at once - but lets have that in the plugin rather than Zotero itself. I also believe this has been requested before.

3) I would be inclined to say yes, but other people might feel that all formatting should be done through the styles, rather than in an ad hoc fashion for each document (which is a very "Word" approach to text-editing). There are some simple options in the csl file that allow modifying the Bibliography (if you mean an extra line between references, e.g. <option name="entry-spacing" value="2"/>

4) you can edit and save styles in Zotero, it's just, as of now, less comfortable than e.g. in Endnote, but this is being worked on.

For a brief example of how to modify and save a style (csl) file see here:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5104/modifying-word-plugin-using-journal-abbreviation-instead-of-publication-name/#Item_2

but people are very much aware that an easy to use style editor would be highly desirable.

If you use zotero to browse for articles containing certain keywords, etc, and then cntrl-select the useful ones, prior to switching back over to your word processor, it is intuitive to simply "add selected references..." and have them all fall into place. This seems like pretty normal behavior for users of all OS's these days.

If this is "pretty normal behavior" in all OSes, I don't think it's generally quite the same as what you're referring to. You can select photos in iPhoto and click a button to send them via e-mail, but that doesn't add them to an open e-mail message—it creates a new message with those photos. In Zotero's case, there's always an open word processor document. Inserting citations into an open document in another app (when there may be multiple documents open, the cursor may not be in the right place, etc.) doesn't seem like a good idea.

Very few of the styles I'd really like to see are actually available now in Zotero. I've looked in the forums, and have watched somewhat complicated discussions of how to create them (discussions taking days and weeks).

I see no posts from you where you've actually requested a style. While turnaround time varies, properly requested styles have been produced by community members within hours.

Building on the iphoto example-- when you are in your email program and you want to send a photo from your iphoto collection, isn't it the case that you would open iphoto, perhaps search for all of those including the tag "uncle ed", then select a couple of photos to send?

And I explained above the problem with this comparison. If you go to iPhoto to select photos, you need to start a new e-mail message rather than using one you have open.

If you have an open message in Apple Mail, you don't go back to iPhoto. You click Photo Browser in the toolbar and browse your photo library from a specialized window that allows you to insert photos in the context of your message.

Regarding requesting a style, I was browsing the forums to see the experience of other users in requesting styles. I noted the thread here: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4265/anthropologistsarchaeologistsstyles-please/

That's a long, complicated thread that required significant discussion and even new features to be added to the CSL processor. It also mostly predated the Requesting Styles page, which is designed to guide end users through the initial steps of outlining a style's requirements (which the user would have to do anyway even if there were a style editor). Still, one of the initially requested styles on that thread was produced within a day.

Thanks Dan-- I agree, if the plug-in allows you to access the analysis features of the program (iphoto or zotero), then it is likely to be more intuitive to work from the word processor.

Regarding styles, point taken--first time I need a new style, I will work through the Requesting Styles instructions and see how that goes. Even so--my trepidation is not yet alleviated... I like the idea that I'd be able to make my own style as necessary through a simple style-generation utility.

And if you happen to have the wrong document as the front-most window in Word? If you have the cursor in the wrong place? It just doesn't seem to make sense to insert citations outside of any sort of document context.

There are other enhancements that could be made to allow quicker insertion of citations in a document, but that doesn't seem like a good one.

(Context: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7839/ I've never actually used RefWorks, so I don't know exactly how the feature you mention works, but I'm going on your description in that thread.)

Perhaps a good compromise would be to add a preview pane (equivalent to the "third" column in Zotero) to the Word plug-in so that authors can see whether they are selecting the correct reference(s) prior to inserting them into the document. I find that the main reason I'm selecting the references within the Firefox Zotero plug-in is so that I can locate the correct references. A preview pane would simply the workflow in adding references, especially if it allowed you to open pdfs by double-clicking on them.