(BTW when all the field values in the notification display are less than the width of five stars, the stars get cut off because the display isn't wide enough...)

One other thing I've noticed on my Mac mini is that the advance window animation in preferences doesn't show properly: it animates too fast. 

Are you sure you don't have any other software installed that 
displays a similiar notification? (there are many ;-)

Regarding the stars bug report: thanks & good point!

Do you mean the sheet animation? It's the OS X default for

[[NSApplication sharedApplication] 
beginSheet:modalForWindow:modalDelegate:didEndSelector:contextInfo:];

I wouldn't even know how to change it. Please let me know, if you 
meant something else.

Best regards, 
Felix 

And yes, I meant the sheet animation that displays the advance options when you click on the advanced button. It's not a real issue but something I thought I'll let you know. 

Regarding the sheet animation: it's done entirely by OS X, so I can't 
do anything about it. It's the speed Apple wants it to have ;-)

A funny sidenote regarding that: Apple accellerated the sheet 
animation in Tiger when compared to Panther - which, although the 
change is subtle, actually contributes to the impression, that Tiger 
is faster than Panther in UI drawing.

Best regards, 
Felix 

As for the rating notification, can I request a hidden preference for advance users to turn it off? I already have something else that does the job of telling me the rating (and to be honest, I think it does a much better job than RB).

On a side note, I remember making a feature request to hide the mouse after x idle minutes...