Why is the Videochat on by default?

I've been DMing a quickie here for a couple of days, and I really like Roll20 so far. In many ways it's a lot more efficient than tabletop gaming - the intiative tracker, the little dots you can apply to every token to track effects, the fog of war, and the hit point bars are all significant upgrades to using a physical battlemat and minis. All my major concerns about using an online platform for gaming were all addressed - the maps are easy to make and use, Roll20 saves the chatlogs and the maps automatically, and it's easy to access the game and move between maps. I'm pretty terrible with computers, so I'm really impressed by an online platform that's fun and easy to use - I honestly think I could run a full campaign here. I've been showing this to everyone I know who wants to talk about gaming. There were only a couple things that threw me. Mostly the videochat function - Roll20 assumes that you really, really want to videochat with your friends, and I accidentally turned the video on while clicking around trying to minimize those huge avatar boxes. I think everyone in the group would have preferred if the default setting for the avatar boxes was "name only", or it were possible to close the videochat boxes by right-clicking on them and using a drop-down menu or popup window from there, instead of digging around in the settings sidebar - we had to Google how to get rid of the boxes, but then again we didn't really pay much attention to the orientation video. Once everyone managed to shut down their videochats, the name-only boxes were a good way to track who was currently in the room (and we matched the name box colors to the tints we put on the minis, which was handy). The only problem we ran into came when a group member transferred to a computer with no webcam, and his name box stopped showing up. He didn't have any problems with the text chat or anything else, but I would have preferred to be able to see his nametag along with the other players', to keep track of who was online. The only other real nitpick is that the ruler only measures in 5-foot increments, and our attacks are all measured in squares (burst 1, etc.). It's not insurmountable math, but it is a little annoying. It would be nice if the ruler had the ability to switch between measuring feet and measuring squares.

As an add on this suggestion, I would love to see a 'global prefs' you can set BEFORE going into the table top.  Then have each table top able to overide the global's. Minutia, the ruler measures based on what you have the grid set at.  It's in the page settings, but I don't recall exactly where.  In a Mecha game I play, it measures each square as 500ft, as recall.  ;) I set my test campaign at 1 ft so that I can pretend it's inches for Warhammer Fantasy Battles.  

It remembers your preferences in each campaign. Default to video chat on is the way it should be for ease of use. 

It doesn't seem to remember for me. I like Small Icons, no video or voice (since I use other programs to chat) and it always defaults to Large icons and video and voice on.

JonathanTheBlack said: It remembers your preferences in each campaign. Default to video chat on is the way it should be for ease of use.  I've noticed that.  And its nice.  Still would be nice to have global prefs.

Thanks, Ty M. I found the ruler settings, and changed them!

For your own campaigns, as a workaround, you could create an empty campaign with the settings the way you want them, and then create your new campaigns from copies of that, but I see how global preferences would be useful for you when joining as a player.