1.1. Sophie's interface
There are three main parts of the Sophie interface: the book desktop, the left flap, and the right flap. The book desktop is the gray area in the center of the Sophie window. The Sophie interface looks like this:
Flaps are the things that stick out on the left and right side of the Sophie window; you can adjust the size of the flaps by dragging the margins back and forth. Each flap has several tabs in it, which can be selected by clicking the tab name. Most tabs contain more than one palette. Palettes can be lists of things used in Sophie (like all the movies in a book) or tools (like the spellchecker). The content of flaps, tabs, and palettes can be hidden by clicking the title of the flap, tab, or palette. There's also a bottom flap, which is hidden in the screenshot above. When the bottom flap button is clicked, the timeline workspace is shown.
The Book Desktop tab in the book tab bar above the book desktop will minimize all open books and show the book desktop behind them. A tab will appear next to the Book Desktop button for every book that is open in Sophie; in this screenshot, "My New Book" is open. If you click on the "Show Preview" button in the status bar of a book window, a preview of the book will be generated; it will have its own tab in the tab bar (with a name like "Preview of My New Book"), and you can switch back and forth between the book and its preview.
Sophie has menu bars, but they’re not used as often as the flaps or halos and HUDs.
Most elements of Sophie's interface have tool tips: if you leave your mouse over something, text will appear to tell you what it is called and possibly what it does.
Sophie's appearance can be changed: if you select one of the entries under the Skins entry in the menu bars, you can give Sophie a different look and feel. This changes are minor at this point, but they will be more substantial in the future.
