After editing a widget's properties, there should be a hint that informs that form needs to be saved too (a-la Views)

Take renaming a vertical tab's label for example...

After hitting the "Update" button, if a user is not accustomed to this, they will think that there's a bug because despite the "Your settings have been saved" message, they see no change in their actual form. If they've used views before, they'll eventually figure it out, but I think that the message should also give them a hint that they need to hit the "Save" button at the bottom of the form too. How about:

"Your [widget_name] settings have been updated. You need to save the form to finally apply changes."

Also, because most users are lazy-readers, I'm sure they'll read only the "...settings have been saved." part. So this initial message should be a warning (yellow color and all).

Thanx for considering this.