Hi Sohrob, and welcome to Dimpleton!
There is a built-in tutorial, you can find it in the Help menu, “Getting Started”. It introduces the basics concepts of Dimp and how it works.
Also, here’s a reference to pretty much everything Dimp does right now:
Basic navigation and manipulation
Drag a limb by the handle (the circle) to say: this is where this should be at this time.
Click in the timeline at the top to change the time. Every line is a second.
Click the rewind button (|<) to go tot the start of the animation.
Click the play or pause buttons (> and ||) to play or pause.
Click the fast forward button (>|) to go to the last keyframe in the animation.
Hover over the timeline to see a ghostly image of the scene at that time.
Select a keyframe (a handle turned yellow) by clicking it.
With a handle selected, press Backspace to delete the keyframe.
Advanced editing
With a handle selected, press Command+Backspace to delete the entire figure.
Drag a Pivot (.stk) or Dimp file into the canvas (the big white area) to add the figures in that file to the animation.
Advanced navigation
Drag with the right mouse button to scroll around the canvas.
If you have a two-way scroll wheel/ball (like the Mighty Mouse), you can also use that to scroll.
If you have a Magic Mouse, you can scroll both ways using one finger.
If you have a multi-touch trackpad, use two fingers to scroll.
Scroll with Option (Alt) pressed to zoom in and out.
If you have a multi-touch trackpad or mouse, pinch with two fingers to zoom.
Advanced timeline usage
Press Command + 1 or choose Thumbnails from the View menu to switch to thumbnail mode (default).
When in thumbnail mode, you’ll see a snapshot of your animation for every second.
Press Command + 2 or choose Animation Graph from the View menu to see a detailed graph of all movement in your scene.
Resize the timeline by dragging the divider line.
Scroll the timeline left or right using the scrollbar, the scroll ball on your mouse if you have one, or using multi-touch.
In Animation Graph mode, you can also scroll the timeline up or down using the scroll wheel or using multi-touch.
Helper guidelines
Click the leftmost button (the two intersecting lines) at the bottom of the Dimp window to open the guidelines overlay.
Hover over the newly appeared gutter to choose a place to place the guideline.
Click to place the guideline.
Drag a guideline while inside the gutter to move it.
Click a guideline outside the gutter to delete it.
Click the guideline toggle button again to return to the normal canvas.
You can also return to the normal canvas by double-clicking anywhere in the canvas.
QuickTime (video) export
Click the button with the little QuickTime window (second from the right) or choose Export to QuickTime from the Share menu to show the QuickTime export panel.
When “Current canvas size” is selected as resolution, the movie will export the animation with the same size as the window is right now.
Choose a file name and click Save to export the video. This can take a little while, depending on the duration and complexity of your animation and also the speed of your computer.
These QuickTime videos are perfect for uploading to YouTube.
Built-in sharing
Click the sharing button (rightmost) or choose Upload & Link… from the Share menu to bring up the sharing panel.
The image shows the thumbnail that will be used. The gray bars are cropped (cut off).
Tick “Make private” to make the animation invisible in the Dimp Theater. Otherwise, it will show up there.
Click the “Sign up” button to create an account if you don’t already have one.
Click the Forgot button if you forgot your password.
If you want to save your username and password, tick “Store in my keychain”.
Click Upload to upload the animation.
In the post-upload screen, you’ll see Dimpleton BBCode. Use this to show your Dimp animation in a Dimpleton post.
Click “Upload Again…” if you revised your animation and want to upload it again.
Click “Open Site” to go straight to the Dimp Theater.
Other Dimp features
Choose Check For Updates… from the Dimp preview menu to check for new updates. This also happens automatically every now and then.
Choose Getting Started from the Help menu to view the tutorial.
Choose Visit Dimpleton Forum from the Help menu to go here.
Using the Dimp Theater
Click the “save” link beneath the thumbnail to save the animation as a Dimp file, for watching or editing later.
Click any thumbnail to see the animation in Dimp.
Dimp looks a bit different in playback mode. Move the mouse over the animation to see scroll knob appear. Drag it to scrub through the animation.
Click the edit button (rightmost) to go to regular edit mode.
In the theater, log in using the log in box at the top right.
When logged in, click “channel” in the log in box to go to your channel.
You can delete an animation using the Delete button. Be careful, as you can’t restore them without uploading again.
Click “edit profile” in the log in box to go to your profile.
Change “Displayed name” to change your nickname in the theater.
Change “channel name” to change the URL of your channel. The link is shown right below the text box.
Enter your Dimpleton username and password and click Couple to show a Dimpleton profile link on your channel.
If I forgot anything, let me know. I’ll include this list (and more, better documentation) in a future Dimp release.