A new Sparkle document starts with a blank page where you can add the elements to your website layout. 

The most direct way to add elements to the canvas is via the corresponding toolbar buttons, or opening the "Add" popup. You can use the system toolbar customization to add and remove different elements on the toolbar.

Each content type is explained in more detail in this documentation:

• Text — adds a block of text
• Map — adds a Google map
• Video — adds a video element
• Image — adds an image
• Image Gallery — adds an image gallery
• Image/Video Grid — adds a grid
• Audio — adds an audio element
• Lottie Animation — adds an animation
• Blog Tags — adds blog tags to a blog page
• Box — adds a decorative box
• Wide box — adds a box, pre-set to be as wide as the browser window
• Popup — adds a popup
• Layout Block — adds a Layout Block
• Layout Grid — adds a Layout Grid
• Menu — adds a menu
• Button, Text Input, Checkbox, Radio Button, Option Selection, Slider and File Attachment — add form elements or action buttons (see Buttons and Forms)
• Login Form — adds a login form for access to password protected content
• Payment — adds a payment button or shopping cart
• Property Booking — adds a property booking widget
• Calendar — adds a calendar widget
• Ad Unit — adds an advertisment
• Table Booking — adds a table booking widget
• Twitter widget — adds a tweet, a twitter timeline or a twitter profile link
• Facebook widget — adds facebook’s buttons (like, share, etc.) or a facebook profile link
• Embed —adds code provided by a third party website
• Scroll Location — adds a position on the page where the browser can scroll to via an on click action
• Site Search — adds a search query box and a search results page

Details on element position, size and layering can be found in the Arrange pane inspector documentation page.

In addition to the freeform positioning via dragging or inspector, the Sparkle canvas features a Layout Grid, that elements snap to, magnetically.

Grid settings can be changed using the Grid button on the toolbar. Sparkle defaults to a 12 column grid.

An alternative to grid snapping are the automatic guides based on element boundaries. For example, here the top of the text aligns to the bottom of the image:

While using magnetic snapping help construct a tidy layout, you can prevent snapping by holding down the control key while dragging an element.

If you want to position an element further down or up on the page, in an area currently not visible, you can drag near the canvas edge and the page will scroll automatically.