It does not have live preview, it uses latex in the backend so you have to compile to view your changes. I have found the interface mostly intuitive myself (ym

It does not have live preview, it uses latex in the backend so you have to compile to view your changes. I have found the interface mostly intuitive myself (ymmv). It has absolutely no problem doing simple documents, quite the opposite actually, it makes it very simple. Looking at the web page, I agree it does not make this very clear. The docs come as LyX documents packaged with the software, if you feel like having a look, install it and hit help > tutorial