I wanted to run this by you before submitting a feature request.
Currently, if you want to draw a new shape, and you want to select its color and stroke in advance, your only option is to use the swatches - you cant select some arbitrary color for the next shape. Selecting the stroke width is impossible.
I suggest making the Fill and stroke dialog active even when nothing is selected, so that changing it affects the next created shape.
I know that there's a setting where you can set a specific style for each tool instead of drawing with the last used style. In this case we have two options: 1. Upon changing to a tool that has its own style, the fill and stroke dialog remains grayed out. 2. Upon changing to a tool that has its own style, the fill and stroke dialog changes to reflect this style, and modifying it changes the tool's style for the rest of the session.