Newbie advice: Making properties current..

[morphonius_821]

Hi all...
just wondering if anyone can help...
im doing my first design on xara (I'm from a corel background)
And im having a few issues:

1) making properties current...
(especially with feathering applied ETC when i get an object the way i like it can i easily make this the default setting for new objects? if so how?)

2) copying a colour to a small object....
(with the colour editor it is apparent you can drag colours to the edge or in-fill of any object..however when i am attempting to do so with small objects,..,......only the edge cursor appears and i can not seem to get it to drop on the in-fill of small objects...any hints?)

3) copying a colour to the palette..
(is there an easy way to do this......i tried drag and drop but this does not work?

4) is there any short cut or "hot key" to get the picker tool to ignor the current layer...
(this would be very handy as often the colour, from the raster art on a lower layer with the colours i want is actually obscured by the current working object and obviously i dont want the picker to select this.....and moving the object sideways seems tedious...
Can this be done?

help appreciated...thanks all.