# Welcome preferences

The General > Welcome preference page allows you to customize the welcome appearance and content. You can select an overall theme, decide which pages will be available, and configure the order, layout, and visibility of the items within pages.

Note: This page will only appear when the product is configured to use the Universal Welcome.

Option | Description | Default
--- | --- | ---
Home Page Theme | This option will change the overall appearance of welcome. | Circles
Root Pages | Select the welcome pages you would like to see in welcome. | Overview, Tutorials, Samples, What's New
Apply settings to all products sharing this workbench | If you have multiple products sharing the same eclipse workbench, using this option will cause the changes for all of them, as opposed to only the currently running product. | Off
Save As... | Converts the current preferences in this page to XML content compatible with the `introData.xml` format used to define the defaults for a product's welcome configuration. This is meant for product developers and assemblers, and is not needed by end users. | N/A
Available Extensions | Items in this container will not be shown in the selected welcome page. | N/A
Left Column | Items that should appear in the left half of the selected welcome page, arranged vertically from top to bottom. The bottom containers are explained below the table. | N/A
Right Column | Items that should appear in the right half of the selected welcome page, arranged vertically from top to bottom. The bottom containers are explained below the table. | N/A
Importance | The importance is shown as an icon next to the item, and determines the item's importance relative to others. Themes may use this information to present the items differently, depending on their importance. To change the importance, click on the icon and a drop down menu will appear. The possible settings are: low - The item will not be emphasized. medium - The item will be given some emphasis. high - The item will be strongly emphasized. new - The item is new and will be presented as such. callout - The item is of a different nature, or is special in some way (e.g. a video/animation) | low

For each page, there are four quadrants in which to place items; two for each column. The quadrants will be separated in the presentation, and are used to classify distinct groups of items that should be kept separate from each other. If you do not want to separate items into four quadrants and only have columns, place all items in the top two quadrants.

Here is what the Welcome preferences page looks like:

Welcome

Customizing welcome