@narciblog asked about better font support in SQL Developer.  It appears I never noticed that Anti-Aliased is not the default.  Here's a screen shot of the default that installs today.



Now, add 2 lines to the sqldeveloper.conf file


AddVMOption -Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on
AddVMOption -Dswing.aatext=true


Then you get a much nicer looking font.



This is probably the quickest and easiest tip I've given so far. 



The gory details are here : http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/2d/flags.html#aaFonts