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Given that preferences and settings are roughly equatable to users of websites, it seems the more commonly used term would be preferable for the sake of being more readily understood. I haven't been able to find a resource telling me which of these is more common, other than just doing an informal survey of lots of sites. Can anyone point to a resource for stats on word usage or studies including these words?
Note: this is for websites, not platform-specific applications.
According to Google Ngram, there is a consistent preference for "settings" (see what I did there?)
There's a few discussions on it already around the web.
They are very similar. 'Preferences' usually control the settings of your personal favorites -- things of little consequence -- like color of font, type size, background photo... -- usually personal prefences. The tern 'settings' is much broader and can impact system issues -- ram size, network adapter.... This is how it works in my mind. Of course, developers are free to label things any way they seem fit.
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1203496
All four are often used as interchangeable terms in English - however, they do have slightly different 'official' meanings...
Configuration - how you set up what an application does 'initially' - typically when you install it... Settings - how you change what an application does after it's been installed... Preferences - how you prefer an application to do things - after it's been installed [==settings]... Options - how you change what an application does [after it's been installed] - including some things that it might not have done in the initial 'default configuration / settings': i.e. there might can be additional 'optional' settings that you can 'turn on or off'...
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=27737
There does seem to be some minor differences, but you could probably use them interchangeably if you really wanted to.
Further to Revolt's nice break down of the different terms, it seems clear to me that "preferences" is actually quite different from "settings" (despite some people using them interchangeably).
If something comes with a default value, then that setting is not a preference until the user changes it!
Whose preference, exactly, does it reflect when still in the default state? ...certainly not the user's (it can only be a developer's), so it is silly to name it name way.
Following that logic, the only things that could reasonably be called preferences are things with a "default value" of "non-existent" (which means they have more in common with "options", as defined by Revolt's answer, than with "settings"). An example would be the ability to have an e-mail app highlight certain e-mails, such as those sent directly "To" you as opposed to "CC" or "BCC". The highlighting would not exist by default, so settings surrounding how the highlighting works could reasonably be called preferences.
This of course, means that "settings" is a better choice for wide use, and should be the standard.
For a website, as opposed to an application, I think preferences make sense. Preferences implies that it is a settings section allowing the user to make choices according to their preference.
Settings, in my mind, implies that you are changing the way something works. More specifically, you might NEED to change a setting to make it work. They are less optional. For example, you might need to input an API key so the application can connect with another account.
I think using a modifier can help clarify too. For example on a "Settings" page, you could have a "Layout Preferences" section.
On Mac OS X this menu item is standard in all desktop applications and is called "Preferences" - so if you are making a desktop application and it will be released on Mac then you should call it this and put into appropriate location on the main menu.
To my mind, "preferences" are a subset of settings which make some actions more convenient and others less convenient, but do not make any actions impossible. Consider two programs' font-size behavior:
A "font-size" dialog sets the default font size which is used to show newly-opened documents, but enlarge/shrink buttons will change the font size for the current document without affecting anything else.
A "font-size" dialog sets the font size for all document windows until the next time the dialog is invoked.
I would consider the former dialog a "preference" and the latter a "setting". If a desired action is "show four documents with font size 12", performing that action when the default font size was set to 12 would be much more convenient than doing it when it was set to 9, since the latter would require using "enlarge" on every document. Nonetheless, someone could show up all the documents at size 12 without having to visit the font-size dialog. By contrast, if the latter dialog was set to size 9, the only way to view documents in size 12 would be to visit that dialog and change the setting to 12.
Note that while "preferences" mainly represent things like default window properties, they may also apply to options for things like confirmation dialogs if those options do not enable or disable useful functionality. For example, if selecting multiple objects and hitting "delete" can either pop up a confirmation dialog box or simply delete the items, and if anything that could be done through the dialog box can be done even when the "delete" key would bypass it(*), then it would be a preference.
(*) For example, if the dialog would include an option to prompt a user for each item to be deleted, such functionality should be made available, even when the dialog would normally be bypassed; that could be achieved by a context menu choice "Delete with confirmation".
