I am brand new to blender and this site (just started about 20 min ago) and i am trying to use the Uv tools that it comes with to texture a very simple model as a test(it only has like 19 sides) but the system of making the image then bending the uv to it is reallly awkward for me. I have gotten used to using a 3d studio max kind of aproch where you UVW map the whole thing then make a texture to fit the outlines. is there any way to do this in Blender? also after i opened up the image viewing box(where it shows a image that you move sides to fit the image) i cant get the material editor to open back up(only way i now how to get it to open is f5) is this the wrong key? is there another way? thanks for you tiem
I usually double check my answers before I post and in this case, the stuff had seemingly disappeared! I decided to check the release notes, and found that the UV exporter had been moved. Inside the UV window (where you lay out your UV coordinates) click the “UVs” menu and “save face layout.” Scroll down to the bottom of the release notes for Python scripts and you’ll find what the other scripts here do. It was moved so that it’d be easier to find, they’re constantly trying to make improvements to the interface because of obfuscation complaints, which annoys us long time users a bit. 
As for the material editor, most people either drag the buttons window out of view when they don’t need it or leave it there all the time. You can split the window into multiple views by right-clicking on an edge of the 3d window. To split into two vertical windows you should click on the top outline of the 3d window just below the menus (when your pointer changes, of course) and for horizontal right click on the right side of the screen. Sometimes this is finicky and you’ll have to try a couple of times, because if you move your mouse off of the screen the operation cancels.
Otherwise, you can just click the little icon on the far left of the bar full of buttons, it’ll bring up a pop-up list of possible windows. The item that displays the materials, edit buttons, etc. is the button window. In the menu bar at the top of the screen there is a drop down list starting with “SCR:” that saves your view layout. You can set up multiple layouts and rapidly switch between them for different purposes with this option. They will disapear when you start a new session though - to fix this just start a clean file and set everything up the way you want it. Press ctrl+u and you can save that as the default every time you open Blender.