Someone mentioned an idea on ArcIdeas for making various display settings on a feature classes scale-dependent. Right now some of that can be accomplished by loading a feature classes multiple times, adjusting the settings, and setting the visible range. Working more and more in ArcGIS Server, I can see the value of increased scale-dependent settings. I’m not sure how rapidly ESRI takes ‘Ideas’ into consideration but if you feel like it would benefit you, why not promote this idea: Scale Range, SQL Query and Symbology Rendering in ArcMap.

Maybe I am just dense, but skimming ArcIdeas, I found out that the transparency for an icon is determined by the upper-left pixel. Don’t know if this is an ESRI convention or not but thought I would pass it one.