The two buttons, "Save" and "Save and Continue Editing" really represen two parts of a workflow: First, you make a series of changes, saving each time (and possibly view the page to see the effects), and then you're satisfied and you go on to something else. (see "Saving your work" on http://dev.radiantcms.org/radiant/wiki/UsingRadiant)
The problem is that if the page is published, visitors see those intermediate changes when they shouldn't, but if you change the status to 'Draft', visitors won't see the page all (404)!
This patch changes the two buttons to "Publish" and "Save" and makes them do just that. If you're working with a published page and you Save, you can continue editing and the public won't see your changes until you Publish. You, however, can see them by going to the dev site. The same goes for snippets and layouts.
This seems like a pretty important (and unobtrusive) change, so I'm recommending it be a patch and not an extension. I'd also like a tab that shows you a list of drafts with checkboxes to mass-publish, but this seems like an optional feature best suited for an extension.
