Exploring Open Office.org Impress Window

The Impress screen displays several toolbars and other basic screen elements as shown in Diagram 1.

The components of the Impress screen are:
Menu Bar – It is similar to menu bar in other OpenOffice.org applications having File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Slide Show, Window and Help menus.

Drawing Main Toolbar – It is located at the left edge of the window. This main toolbar contains frequently used editing tools. Toolbar icons with a small green arrow indicate a floating toolbar and on clicking this icon will open a floating bar that contains additional choices.

Function Bar – It helps performing routine tasks with ease. The function bar provides shortcuts to menu commands like copying, opening a document or closing, printing a page, and so on.

Drawing Object Bar – It contains commands and options like Line Style, Line Width, Line Color, Area Style/Filing, etc.

Scroll Bar – It helps to scroll through the slides in a presentation

Status Bar – It is located at the bottom of the Impress screen. It displays the number of the current slide and name of the template on which the presentation is based.

Slide Pane - The Slides pane contains thumbnail pictures of the slides in your presentation, in the order they will be displayed. Clicking a slide in this pane selects it and places it in the Workspace. While it is there, you can apply any changes desired to that particular slide.
Several additional operations can be performed on one or more slides in the Slides pane:

Add new slides at any place within the presentation after the first slide.
Mark a slide as hidden so that it will not be shown as part of the slide show.
Delete a slide from the presentation if it is no longer needed.
Rename a slide.
Copy or move the contents of one slide to another (copy and paste, or cut and paste, respectively).

It is also possible to perform the following operations:

Change the slide transition following the selected slide or after each slide in a group of slides.
Change the sequence of slides in the presentation.
Change the slide design. (A window opens allowing you to load your own design.)
Change slide layout for a group of slides simultaneously. (This requires using the Layouts section of the Tasks pane.)

Task Pane - The Tasks pane has five sections:

Master pages: From this section you can define the page style for your presentation. Impress contains master pages (slide masters). The default is blank and the rest have a background.
Layouts: There are various layouts provided for your presentation. You can select the one you want, use it as it is or modify it to your own requirements. At present it is not possible to create custom layouts.
Table Design: This section allows you to insert table (rows, columns) with different types of design effects. You can select the one you want and can use it according to your requirement.
Custom Animation: This section contains a variety of animation effects that can be applied at any time to selected elements of a slide.
Slide Transition: Various transitions are available, including No Transition. You can select the transition speed (slow, medium and fast). You can also choose between an automatic or manual transition and for how long you want the selected slide to be shown i.e. (automatic transition only).

Workspace - The Workspace has five tabs: Normal, Outline, Notes, Handout, and Slide Sorter. The actual Workspace section is below the tabs. It is the place where you assemble the various parts of your selected slide.

Each tab is designed to ease the completion of certain tasks:

Normal view - Itis the main view for creating individual slides. Use this view to format and design slides and to add text, graphics, and animation effects.
Outline view - It shows topic titles, bulleted lists, and numbered lists for each slide in outline format. Use this view to rearrange the order of slides, edit titles and headings, rearrange the order of items in a list, and add new slides.
Notes view- It lets you add notes to each slide that are not seen when the presentation is shown.
Handout view - Itlets you print your slides for a handout. You can choose one, two, three, four, or six slides per page from Tasks pane > Layouts. Thumbnails can be re-arranged in this view by dragging and dropping them.
Slide Sorter view- It shows a thumbnail of each slide in order. Use this view to rearrange the order of slides, produce a timed slide show, or add transitions between selected slides.

Diagram1