When you start Synfig Studio, it will display a splash graphic and boot itself up. After it finishes loading, you should see three windows. The window in the upper left is the toolbox. This is where you can open files, change tools, etc. You'll notice that most of the buttons are greyed out--because there is no file open yet. The other two windows (one on the bottom, and one to the right) are customizable dock dialogs. You can rearrange the contents of these however you wish by simply dragging the tab to where you want it. You can even create a new dock dialog by dragging a tab out of the dock dialog it was inside of. If you ever accidently close a dock tabs (by dragging it out of the dock dialog, and closing the new dock dialog that gets created), no worries. Simply goto the toolbox and goto "File->Dialogs", and then click on the name of the dialog you need. There are a lot of dock tabs. If you have no idea what a dock tab does, simply hold your mouse over its icon and a tooltip will pop up describing the name of the tab. Here are some of the more important ones: Layers Dialog () - This tab shows you the layer hierarchy for the currently selected canvas. It also allows you to manipulate these layers. Params Dialog ()- This tab will show you the parameters of the currently selected layer, (OR, if multiple layers are selected, it shows you only the parameters that the selected layers have in common) Tool Options Dialog () - Shows you any options specific to the currently selected tool Navigator () - Shows you a thumbnail of what the currently selected Canvas looks like. You can also zoom in and move the focus around with this tab. History Dialog (- Shows you the history stack for the current composition. You can also edit the actions in history. If you click the "new composition" button in the toolbox, a new composition will be opened and the canvas properties dialog will appear. The canvas properties dialog is a mess, I know. I'll have it re-designed into something much more comprehendible in the next few days. For now, ignore the "Image Area" and "Locks and Links" sections. If you click OK, the canvas properties dialog will disappear and you will see the Canvas window. This window represents the Root Canvas, not that that means much to you at the moment, but that's OK--I'm just trying to show you around. In the upper left corner of the Canvas Window, you'll see a button with a caret If you click on this button, the canvas window menu will pop up. (As an aside, if you right click in the canvas area and there is not a layer under the mouse position, this menu will also appear) So now you know where the menu is in the Canvas Window. Good. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory in the Canvas Window. (Explanations on the menu stuff is to come in a sec) &toolbox.sgml; &layers.sgml; ¶ms.sgml; &tooloptions.sgml; &navigator.sgml; &history.sgml;