iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Controlling the Document Window

Even though you’ve already created a few polished documents with the examples in this chapter, you might have noticed that you’ve barely touched the program’s menus, toolbar buttons, or inspectors. As you’ve seen, the nuts-and-bolts editing of text and images takes place directly in the window’s main work area with lots of typing and a bit of light mousework.

Over the next few chapters, as you get acquainted with Pages’ more advanced formatting and layout tools, you’ll set aside this mitts-off approach. Mastering the placement of the buttons and controls that light up your Pages dashboard is the next step to creating and editing great Pages documents. Fortunately, Apple’s software designers have gone easy on you. Rather than cramming every possible tool and button into Pages’ document window in a noisy clutter, they’ve pared the window down to the bone, opting for a Danish-modern starkness instead of the rococo of most word-processing programs.

In fact, when you first opened a new document (Figure 1-3), your first thought might have been, “Where is everything?” Don’t panic, it’s all there. Despite its minimalist design, Pages gives you easy access to the tools and features you’re most likely to need by placing them at the top of the window, while keeping the ones you need less often—or for more esoteric tasks—hidden just below the surface. Figure 1-20 tours the highlights of your document-window cockpit.

You can choose to live with this minimalist window ...