The Basic Interface
The interface is dominated by four panels that are always present. These are, clockwise from top right:
The document panel
This is the dominant panel of the interface. It's where you read documents, browse the web, read messages, watch movies.
At its top is a horizontal bar displaying the document date, the type, the author and the title. If the panel were displaying a web page then the author would be the website and the title would be the title normally seen in a browser. Click and hold on one of the fields to show a list of recents followed by an alphabetical list for jumping to other documents.
Click and release a field to change its value. In the case of a web page, changing its title causes the page to be permanently saved. While focused in the document panel paging up and down scrolls through the current document and tabbing steps through documents. When you leave a document it is stamped with information about where in the document you last were.
There are also two New Document buttons on the horizontal bar; one creates a document in the style of whatever you are currently viewing, the other creates a new universal blank document.
The properties panel
This is where you learn the status of whatever is selected elsewhere in the interface. Selecting a contact would show that contact's details here -- selecting an image may show it's exif info. Selecting a word in a document would show formatting options and spell checking here.
The timeline panel
The timeline is a vertical panel that displays from the past at the top, to the future at the bottom; a horizontal line, called the terminator, defines the present point in time. Every activity performed on the system is time stamped and can be displayed on the timeline.
The database panel
Every item can be categorized and listed in the database panel. Broad categories could include contacts, collections, document types etc.