Having had this conversation with a million customers when I was a appliance repair tech, I can tell you that the best type of exterior material for your pans on a ceramic stove (induction, radiant, halogen etc) is stainless steel or bare cast iron. These materials will not scratch the glass, in fact most often the stove will come with a steel scrapper to clean the glass.
Any glass or porcelain can scratch the glass. Any soft metal like aluminum or copper will leave marks on the glass, that will come off if cleaned right away with Wiemans cook top cleaner. If they are left on there for a while they will be pretty much permanent. Also most coated aluminum is coated with a porcelain style enamel, see above.
As far as what the interior of the pot or pan is made of, that is up to your personal preference. Something like a clad design or an stainless encapsulated aluminum disc is a excellent compromise for the heat conduction of aluminum without marking the stove top.
If you dont care about marking the stove top however, exposed aluminum or copper are still your best conductors. The little bit of gold or silver streaks left on the glass won't really hurt the way the stove works.
The single MOST IMPORTANT aspect of how your pot or pan works on a ceramic stove top (not induction, that works with electromagnetism) is CONTACT . The pan must be as flat as possible. If your pan only contacts the glass in one or two small spot, those spots will be hot. This is why a lot of people complain that their ceramic glass top stove takes too long to boil water. The biggest reason for this is obvious, the heat isn't in contact with the stove. The other reason this is an issue is that the heat has to be directed to the pot or the element will overheat and shut off. If you look at the element when it glows red through the glass you will see a dark line down the center, that is a thermal limiter that shuts the element off if it overheats. So most people end up with there element cycling on that thermal limiter rather than their control dial setting.
One other thing to note with glass top stoves is that the glass top acts as a heat sink. It retains heat rather well, thus glass top stoves don't have the same heat control as a gas top stove or an stove with exposed heating coils. There is no air flow around the heat source to cool it down quickly when you lower the heat control. So if you have a cast pot of water on the boil, when you turn down or up a gas burner you can almost see the bubbles come and go. With a glass stove the water may continue to boil for some time, until the residual heat goes out of the glass.
Sorry if I was too long winded, but hope that helps.
