Effect Gallery

Here's a huge speed tip when working with various effects in Illustrator CS2. Choose Effect>Effect Gallery. Your first thought is probably, "What the heck is this?!" Rightfully so, since Adobe really didn't make a big deal out of this one and nobody is talking about it. However, it's a huge time saver because you can preview various effects all within one dialog instead of looking at each effect, canceling out of the dialog, and going through the Effect menu all over again to preview another effect.