iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Adding Objects

With all that basic orientation out of the way, you’re finally ready to start building your page by adding objects to the page canvas. This section provides a detailed guide to working with text boxes, images, shapes, movies, and sound (you’ll find out about tables and charts in Chapter 8). The best way to learn about using this collection of objects is just to jump in and start working with them, which is what the next several pages are all about.

To let you get started with all this good stuff, this chapter holds the detailed descriptions of the shared actions, formatting, and styles that all objects have in common until later in the chapter. You’ll get hints and pointers about those features in the next few pages, but if you prefer to learn those ins and outs first, feel free to jump ahead to “Working with Objects” on Working with Objects and “Modifying Object Styles” on Modifying Object Styles. Meanwhile, this section is all about actually designing content on the page, starting with your text.

Adding Text Boxes

In page-layout documents, if you want words, you need text boxes. Whether you’re adding a headline to your design, inserting a lengthy article into your newsletter, or labeling an image with a caption, text boxes do the job. A text box is like a stripped-down mini word-processing document—a little window of words that you can edit with Pages’ full set of text-formatting features. You can also use text boxes in word-processing documents to add sidebars or ...