Yes, I'm sure you gathered by the question that I'm totally new to GIMP, lol.
I pulled up a tutorial for beginners and it said when you open gimp you may see a lot of boxes open, close them all except the tool box and the main window.
I can't find a way to close any of them! I know... duh, right?? But there's no x, no "close", I can't move them. I'm totally flummoxed!
I hope you can help a poor little ole newbie! :D

You have found yourself an old 'tutorial' that is probably giving poor advice anyway.

After installing Gimp you might see something like the screenshot. Individual 'windows' - dialogs can be closed by clicking on the little left pointing arrow which brings up a menu.

However

Gimp 2.8 has a single window mode which has certain advantages for beginners. First thing you should do is in the gimp menu Windows click on Single Window Mode which combines the default 3 windows into one.

For a demo of what you can do, see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQz0zCyVFJU

rich: www.gimp-forum.net

On 03/04/2017 03:35 AM, rich2005 wrote:

Yes, I'm sure you gathered by the question that I'm totally new to GIMP, lol.
I pulled up a tutorial for beginners and it said when you open gimp you may see a lot of boxes open, close them all except the tool box and the main window.
I can't find a way to close any of them! I know... duh, right?? But there's no x, no "close", I can't move them. I'm totally flummoxed!
I hope you can help a poor little ole newbie! :D

You have found yourself an old 'tutorial' that is probably giving poor advice anyway.

That would probably be this old 'tutorial' - it is indeed old, although actively maintained and updated. I have not had any complaints yet but any corrections or suggestions would be appreciated:

http://pilobilus.net/gimp_tutorial.html

"GIMP 2.8 also introduces a much asked for option to configure the GIMP to appear as "one big window" that occupies the whole desktop. Fortunately for folks like me, this configuration is an option that can be turned on and off at will. Far be it from me to complain about "freedom of choice" for users of Free Software: Test drive the "normal" and "single window" modes and see which one you prefer."

"The current online GIMP manual features a picture with the redundant dock window open, and says that this is the most basic arrangement of GIMP windows that can be used effectively. That's simply wrong. Having 8 to 12 more square inches of screen space for the image content I am working on is more effective for me, so I set up the main toolbox to include everything used for common image editing tasks."

To this I might add...

"In the main menu under Windows, the Recently Closed Docks item will enable you to easily identify and bring back any windows you have previously dismissed; in the same menu, Single Window Mode toggles between single and multiple windows. There is also a Dockable Dialogs menu in the Windows dialog, for opening any of the dialog items, which can be used as stand alone items or dragged and dropped into your dock of choice."

... and I just did.

:o)

Steve