Just a quick note before we begin: this tutorial assumes that you are using the default options. If necessary, you can reset them to the defaults by clicking on the “Defaults” button in the Options pane, available under Tools > Options… if you haven’t made any changes to the options, you don’t need to worry about this. Right, on with the tutorial.

When you first open a Scrivener project, by default you are presented with two panes:

1. THE BINDER
On the left, you can see a list of files: the “binder”. This is an outline view that contains three default folders: “Draft”, “Research”, and “Trash”. You can rename these folders to whatever you like by double-clicking on them (in some of the templates, for instance, the Draft folder has been renamed to “Manuscript”). The binder is where you organise your project by creating a structure and dragging and dropping your documents around.
The contents of the Draft folder represent the text fragments that will be compiled into one long document when you export or print using File > Compile…, which is the standard way of preparing your finished project for printing or final formatting in a dedicated word processor. This is very much the raison d’être of Scrivener—to assemble the text of your manuscript in the Draft folder for printing or export. (As such, the Draft folder is unique in that it can only hold text files and folders.)
The Research folder can hold text or media files (images, PDF files, video files and so on). You don’t have to put all research files into the Research folder, though—you can create other folders for your support materials anywhere you want.
The Trash folder speaks for itself; whenever you delete a document it ends up there. Documents aren’t deleted completely until you select “Empty Trash…” from the Project menu—so there’s no way you can accidentally delete a file in Scrivener.

2. THE EDITOR
Next to the binder you have the main editor, which displays the current document. The main editor is what you are looking at right now as you read this text document. There are several ways to load a document in the editor, but the one you will use most often is simply selecting a file in the binder, as you did to load this one. Scrivener allows you to create or import any number of text documents. You can also import image, web, QuickTime and PDF documents. To import documents, use File > Import > Files… or simply drag the files you wish to import from Windows Explorer into the binder of your Scrivener project.
You can change the current document by clicking on another item in the binder. Try that now—double-click a word in this sentence to select it (you’ll see why in a moment), then click on “Alhambra” inside the “Research” folder (you may need to expand the Research folder by clicking on the triangle,  or plus sign, next to it first) and then return here (“Step 1: Beginnings”). See how the selection that you created before is saved and scrolled to automatically? Scrivener always remembers your cursor position and selection, even between sessions. Use this way of “bookmarking your spot” to your advantage as you progress through the tutorial.

So now you know that this area can be used to view different types of document, not just text.

Let’s try switching between documents again. You see the document on the left beneath this one, the one entitled “Step 2: Header View”? Click on it now.