Thought I'd give back to the community by summarizing a list of things that I, a LyX beginner, consider most important.
- Toggle math toolbar if you are a math major. It's the sigma sign that you can click on the top(to the right).
- Use templates! LyX comes with many useful templates pre-installed, among which the thesis template (for writing your thesis), beamer slides template (for presentation) and elsarticle template (for submitting papers) are probably the most useful.
- You can use pretty much any environment in any template, all you need to do is add the module that contains it. For example, if you need "Proof" environment (where the italic proof at the beginning and the white square at the end are automatically added), you just go to Document -> Settings -> Modules -> highlight Theorems or Theorems(AMS) and then click Add. Note that, a very good environment is the one called --Separator--. Also, add "Fix LaTeX" in the Modules while you are there, it will only do you good.
- For multi-line math formulas, right click on it and change the AMS Environment into AMS gather Environment, or change it to Eqnarray Environment. There are more than just these two, you can play around with it and use whatever you like, I only use these two because the first one is good for almost everything, and the second one is good for anything that has a very long expression between consecutive "=" signs.
- Never adjust Indentation or spacing manually! Under Document -> Settings -> Text Layout, change it to Indentation: default. Then after you finish typing the entire document, before you compile, you can go back to Text Layout, and choose between Indentation or Vertical space, double spacing or Onehalf. This way, everything is adjusted globally, no mess.
