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Overview of the Canvas interface

Canvas has four types of documents: Illustration, Publication, Animation, and Presentation. These documents share some common elements, while some specialized controls apply to particular documents types.

Canvas window

The Canvas interface contains eleven main components, providing you with a Layout area as the main area for working on your illustrations, and a variety of toolbars and docks with all the tools you need. Depending on your operating system and your Canvas customizations, your interface may look different than what you see in the image below.

You can customize the interface in several ways, such as by hiding the Toolbar, Properties bar, Docking bar, and Docking pane. You can also dock various palettes and customize the Toolbar. Each document window has Zoom controls, Document controls, and scroll bars. All documents share the Smart Toolbox, Properties bar, and Status bar. You can switch between Canvas documents using the Window menu, or you can tile or stack windows to see more than one document at a time.

1	Menu bar	Menus for all the Canvas features.
2	Toolbar	Shortcut icons for common tasks.
3	Properties bar	Lets you control the properties for the text, painting, or vector tools as well as document setup. You can toggle this bar on or off.
4	Dynamic help	Open this window to display information for selected tools and objects.
5	Docking bar	Provides a customizable dock for the Canvas palettes you use often. You can move the Docking bar to the left, right, or above the layout area.
6	Docking pane	Provides a large dock for the following palettes: Canvas Assistant Document Layout Flowchart Page Navigator Symbol Library
7	Toolbox	Tool palettes snap out to the right. If you use a specific tool palette regularly, lock the palette so it remains open while you use other tools.
8	Zoom controls	Use these controls to zoom in and out of a document.
9	Document controls	Add pages and move from one page or layer to another.
10	Status bar	Displays the status and properties of the currently selected item.
11	Layout area	The main working area for creating illustrations, page layouts, presentations, and animations.

Layout area

The rectangle centered in the Canvas document window is the Layout area. The white space around the Layout area is known as the pasteboard and is additional working space where you can place objects before using them in an illustration. Objects on the pasteboard are saved with the document, but they are not printed.

The Layout area represents different things in the different Canvas document types.

Illustration: A page, called a “sheet,” with layers.
Publication: A single-sided page or two facing pages with layers.
Presentation: A “slide” with layers.
Animation: A frame of an animation. If you select “onion-skinning”, you can see objects on adjacent frames (see All about onion skinning).

You can change the color of the Layout area to represent the color of tinted paper.

To set the Layout area color:

Choose Layout | Document Setup.
Select a color from the Paper color popup palette.

Document navigation controls

A pop-up menu appears below the document window. Open this menu to move through a document.