Just a few, quick tips:

If you think the user interface is too cluttered, just go to the "Window" menu and select "Hide non essential panels". This will help a lot on this issue.

Another nice tip is that even though the "Content" and "Object" panels are faded/grayed, you can still press with the mouse on their tab-panes, to enable the tap/tool. This is sometimes easier then selecting the tool icon.

I also recommend that you check out some of the shortcut keys, such as "Ctrl+E" to toggle editing of content, and "Ctrl+L" to edit layers (works only for image objects).