I have only used wings once…I just didn’t feel like learning too much of it…I want to keep my work in blender 100%…so unfortunately I cannot relate to your statement, as far as using mmb etc, of course it is ideal to just have a toggle for this “tweak mode” and not need to continually use key presses…this does get tedious…I’ve been messing with it.
@justin tweak mode is really simple to explain its useful for those times you have to tweak a model and would cut out needing to press ‘g’ to move a vert, edge of face
when you are in tweak mode in Wings you click to select a vert and as long as you hold the LMB down you can move that vert about. Pushing verts about becomes really quick. you click to select hold down LMB move that vert select the next one etc.
actually i really like how tweaking is solved in blender (right click to start dragging and left click to accept) but this is kind of unrelated to the suggestion of this thread.
you know I had forgotten about that:o but sadly I work with LMB select as my default and it is one of those things that feels clumsy when you have that as you default in 2.49. But still, and this is just a personal preference, Wings tweak mode feels smoother to me there is no switching between RMB or LMB.
But than again am one of those weirdos who thinks Blender should select with the LMB, you should be able to marquee(rectangular) select by holding down the LMB and dragging and clicking into empty space in the 3d view should deselect.
Because I switch between Blender and AutoCAD a bit you should see how many times I try to marquee(rectangular) select with the LMB, than again at times I use Blender shortcuts in AutoCAD:o.
You could always turn on “tweak” in the preferences…
in the edit methods tab look for “drag immediately”…
it makes a lot of sense for those who select with LMB… I use a tablet and RMB select so it actually just works naturally for me without it.
the only problem is that this is always on, so makes accidental and un-wanted movements likely…
If i was a LMB select guy I’d only want this in edit mode, so be warned!
ha ha thanks Michael. I’ve tried this before and that was what ‘it feels clumsy’ part of my previous post was about. I hope this has been resolved in 2.50 but with 2.49 Blender doesn’t always play nice when you switch selecting to LMB.
Wow, I learned something new today, now I have to go lay down.
Michael W is right! Holding the shift key and pressing Z, for example, constrains the manipulation to XY, regardless of your view, I love it! What a time saver!
I will use this feature mostly for scaling, since many times I would like to scale XY simultaneously and lock Z or whatnot. Yay!
I understood what the tweak mode was, but I was unsure…did not want to make any false statements(more so…lol)…same as in lightwave…I do not use it anymore though…but all in all “tweak modes” are a must for any organic modeler…while snapping, constraints, and edge sliding are great for hard edge(forget the term ATM)modeling.
I much prefer the short-cut key method. I know a feature like this would be very irritating. I ofter align my view to a face ("*" key on the num pad in case you didn’t know JB 
so that I can use to view axis to work locked to the plane of the face. If this axis-snapping was used and the face was close, but not actually parallel to the axis, this would be very aggravating.
it should only be an option you can turn on. the default behaviour should stay as it is now.
@FishB8
Yes, we are talking about a toggle, not an “all the time” mode…but thanks for the tip…you mean to say select a face and hit “*” will align the view to the selected face?..I’m gonna go check…that is another new hotkey for me…this thread is like Christmas.