I have noticed that for such areas of the site as the Tutorials section, when making a new tutorial, there isn't a way (that I can see) to preview it for formatting and whatnot. In the past, I have just opened another topic and hit the reply button so that I could preview what it looks like, but then I have to worry about accidentally posting it. With this in mind, here are my ideas:

-Adding a post preview button when writing a new tutorial.
-If this is not possible, maybe a place on the site that we can use for scratch work while designing a post that doesn't have a 'post' button (just a preview button).

That's actually an excellent suggestion. I use "Preview" all the time. It would most definitely be useful when writing up a tutorial.

I rarely notice the stuff up there since I don't use it much, actually. I don't think making it larger will help, but instead, maybe add a section in the 'forums' list that links to the tutorials and downloads. I almost always start in the forums to navigate to other places.