| Palettes give you immediate access to many features built into Mathematica, from creating syntactically complete expressions and inserting special characters, to building up charts and slide shows, all through a convenient point-and-click interface. | |
This is a selection of examples from the complete
"How to" screencast. »Mathematica provides immediate point-and-click access to many of its features through the menu. Here is a list of all the available palettes:
Several of these palettes are dedicated to helping you build up valid
Mathematica syntax.
For example, if you forget the name or syntax of a 3D plotting function, instead of going to the help system you can go to the and open the
Basic Commands section. Clicking the appropriate function will insert a template for that function into your notebook:
The first placeholder is selected by default. You can fill out the template by tabbing between the placeholders:
| Out[8]= |  |
The palette gives visual access to many of the built-in
ColorData functions. Here, you will use this palette to implement a different color scheme in the 3D plot above.
Begin by typing
ColorFunction
:
In the
Gradients section of the palette, scroll down, click
BeachColors, and click
Insert. Evaluate the expression to see the 3D plot with the
gradient:
| Out[9]= |  |
There are also palettes for creating slide shows and for browsing hundreds of the special characters that are built into
Mathematica.
