When I tried the above, I found that when returning to customize.php from view_settings.php, the correct settings would be present on the "Use this form to set your preferences" text, but when selecting the font size and color on customize.php and hitting the "Set my preferences!" submit button, the previous settings would be in effect, not the ones just selected.
Was this due to the conditional structure which looks at the $_COOKIE array before the $_POST array? When I switched these and made it look at the $_POST array first, and then 'elseif' look at the $_COOKIE array, it behaved as expected.
I'm very new at this and am trying to make sure I understand...