When reading papers, I very strongly prefer it if bibliography labels convey some information about the paper instead of being just a number. If I'm already somewhat familar with the literature and see the entry [JS99], I have a good shot of guessing that the authour is referring to the paper of Jones and Smith from 1999; if it's [15] instead I can guess that the surname of the first author probably doesn't start with A or Z, but that's about it. I try to, accordingly, use meaningful labels in my papers, and hence I tend to use \bibliographystyle{alpha}. However, it has two problems which often get me in hot water.
The first names are not abbreviated (which is not a problem in and of itself but when I import references from e.g. MathSciNet they sometimes contain full names and sometimes just the initials).
The bibliography entries are sorted by label rather than by author, as explained here. Personally, I feel like the difference is rather minor, but apparently many people care about ordering and many believe that the correct way to order is lexicographically by the author.
Hence, I ideally I would like a style just like alpha but sorting entries according to the surname of the first author and abbreviating first names. I currently use BibTeX but not BibLaTeX.
biblatexsolution? (Unfortunately, I cannot help with bibtex here).