I imagine this would be fairly simple - if I've got the layer window open and want to edit the same group of settings for another layer it'd be nice to minimize keystrokes needed. One easy trick here would be to just remember which tab I was on when I close the layer window & select a new layer. Naturally you'd need to make it safely fall back to the first tab if I went to a layer where the previous tab wasn't used
Take it one step further and have am optional floating "Layer Options Palette". Then whatever "tab" is active stays active when selecting different layers.
Yeah that would be very helpful, especially for tasks like masking where you need to use the same tab for multiple layers. I agree with Vern, I think. It would be great if the layer settings menu stayed open when changing layers, much like the bone constraint menu does.