Section 121. About the Gallery

121. About the Gallery

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

117 About Manipulating Objects

SEE ALSO

122 Insert Gallery Objects

123 Add New Items to Gallery

When you display the Gallery by clicking the Gallery button on the Drawing tolbar or by choosing Tools, Gallery , you'll see the following collection of predesigned themes:

• Backgrounds A collection of textured patterns such as marble, gravel, cloth, and many more textures with various colors that you can use as your drawings' backgrounds.

• Bullets A collection of various items you can use as bullets in your drawings when creating bulleted lists.

• Homepage Web- related graphics that you can use to create web page graphics, including special buttons and navigational tools that are common on Web pages.

• My Theme Collections of graphics that you've put together and saved.

• Rulers Not the measuring kinds of rulers, but straight colorful edges in multiple designs that you can add to drawings to create borders.

• Sounds Sounds you can add to your files.

NOTES

Why sounds in drawings? Actually, all the OpenOffice.org programs support the use of the Gallery. The sounds are especially useful for Impress presentations. But you might add a sound to a drawing you intend to save in HTML format for use on the Web.

Click the New Theme button to add your own theme (category) to the Gallery.

To display the items in a particular theme, select the theme from those listed on the left. The items in the theme appear on the right, as icons (in Icon view) or as a detailed list of files with a small thumbnail (in Detail view). To view a particular item in a larger view, double-click it. To return to Icon or Detail view, double-click the larger thumbnail again.

Select Tools, Gallery to open and display the Gallery.

You can display (and then remove) the Gallery from the screen by clicking the Gallery button on the Drawing toolbar. The Gallery appears above the drawing area. Resize the Gallery to make the drawing area bigger by dragging the Gallery's bottom edge up or down. You can turn the Gallery into a free-floating toolbar by clicking and dragging its top edge into the drawing area. Dock the Gallery again at the top, bottom, left or right edge of the drawing area by dragging the Gallery toolbar by its title bar, hovering over one edge of the drawing area until you see a dark rectangle, and then releasing the mouse button.

TIPS

Click the Hide button on the Gallery pane to hide it temporarily.

Press Ctrl and double-click the description area at the top of the Gallery to return it to its former stateeither a toolbar or a pane.

When you convert the Gallery into a floating toolbar, you can see more of your drawing area.