Setting a single folder's view options vs. setting the default view options for all folders in Mac OS X 10.6

Question

Goal

• Set the default folder view options in list format, and then set a few special folders to default to the icon view.

Process (I think)

• Open Finder and configure the view options as desired for all folders—list view with 10pt font
• Click "Use as Defaults"
• Open one of the folders that I want to view by default different from the other folders (e.g., Applications)
• Set the view options for just that folder—icon view, 40 x 40 icon size, 10pt font
• Select "Always open in icon view"
• Should I click "Use as Defaults"?

Questions

• What does "Use as Defaults" impact?
  1. The default settings for that particular view style—icon, list, column, and cover flow?
  2. The default settings for that particular folder?
  3. The default settings for all folders?

System Configuration

• OS: Mac OS X 10.6.2

Preliminary/Background Research

• I looked at the StackOverflow Question Set default policy in Finder “View Options”, but I'm still not certain as to the scope of impact when using "Use as Defaults".
• Under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the View Options palette allowed you to select either, but not both, This window only or All windows. Now in OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard you can select check Always open in xxx view and you can push the Use as defaults button (separately or both). The old method seemed to make more sense to me, but I think I just need to find the documentation that states the scope of the two new view options.
• Apple Discussion Finder View Options confusion
• According to How to make Finder windows preferences stick? Macresource discussion, the Always open in xxx view is applied at the directory level via the .DS_Store file

Answer 1

According to the Simple Help discussion Overview: The OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Finder, the scope of the two view options commands is as follows:

• Always Open in xxx View: Applies only to that specific folder.
• Set as Default: Applies to all folders opened in that particular view, meaning that it sets the defaults for that view as opposed to the defaults for that folder. (In my original question, the answer is #1.)

Armed with this knowledge, my problem must stem from old .DS_Store files in some folders as to why in certain folders the text size deviates from my default 10 point default.

Deleting .DS_Store Recursively in Folders

My frustration and confusion from seeing folders open not using my defaults appears to have stemmed from old .DS_Store files from folders that I had copied over from an older machine. To resolve, I recursively deleted the folders as follows using Terminal:

cd ~/Folder with bad views
sudo find . -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \;

Kudos to the Adobe TechNote Removing .DS_Store files on Macintosh OS X? for providing this command to delete recursively.