Feature request from JamesAnelay, posted on GitHub Jun 03, 2015
There is a bug/issue with widget sort orders which means if you have widget widget updates for the 'default' handle and another a specific handle e.g cms pages it is impossible to have your cms_page update block show above the default handles update block.
This is because DB layout updates are pulled in per handle sorted and then the next handle is pulled in this means you can only sort widget updates on a per handle basis.
A fix would be to pull the updates from the database using all current handles using IN($handlesArray) in the select statment. e.g for Magento1 https://github.com/JamesAnelay/WidgetSortOrders