Basic Map Navigation

It's time to learn how to navigate around the map. It is surprisingly easy, and best of all, involves absolutely no map folding whatsoever. We can't re-fold paper maps properly either. This is how we ended up in this line of work.

When you open the Geocortex-based viewer in your Internet browser, you should see something that looks a lot like this.

The map information is displayed in the Map Window. Beside it is the Information Panel, which displays information about the map and lets you do interesting things with the map. Specifically, the Information Panel displays the legend, visible and active layers, and provides interfaces for various tools and processes.

At the top of the viewer you can see the Title Frame and the Tools & Tabs. You will use these tool and tabs to navigate around the map, ask questions of it, and otherwise interact with the information. Scale, active layer, and active tool information are all found at the bottom of the interface in the Status Bar.

If you are feeling lost already... don't worry. Everything will be described in depth in the coming pages.

  With a Geocortex map you can look at a specific area of interest. You can move around the map using the pan tool. The Pan tool lets you slide around to different parts of the map. Suppose you want to go north (up the map). Take the Pan tool and grab (press and hold down the mouse button) onto the map pulling it down. Whatever part of the map you grab with the little hand will end up where you let go of the mouse button. Just like in real life. This works for moving any direction on the map.

Alternatively, you can click on the Directional Pan Bars (located along the edges of the map window) to pan-without switching to the pan tool.

  The Zoom tools are unique to digital maps. They are very much like using an actual magnifying glass, as the icons imply. The main difference is you can't burn ants with them. Yes, this is a cruelty-free technology.

The magnifying glass with the little plus sign lets you 'zoom in', while the one with the little minus sign lets you 'zoom out'. There are a couple of ways to use these tools.

First, click on one of them to select it, then go somewhere on the map and press the left mouse button. If it is the Zoom In tool the map zooms in. The center of the new map is wherever on the map you clicked the mouse button. The Zoom Out tool zooms out the same way.

Second, you can zoom in more precisely by pressing the mouse button somewhere on the map, holding it down, and dragging a box. When you let go of the mouse button the new map extent will be the area defined by the box. When zooming out, the area defined by the box becomes the new map extent.

Click here for a relevant, but not essential, discussion of scale.

One possible method of zooming uses the scale displayed below the map window. Enter your desired map scale, press Go and the map automatically zooms to that scale.

Please note that the scale that appears on this viewer is for map navigation only, and is not necessarily accurate. Without information about the size of your monitor or display device, it is impossible for us to accurately provide a ratio scale.

Error is most pronounced if you are operating a large monitor (or a projection device) running at a very low resolution, or if you are running a small monitor at a very high resolution. A 17" monitor running at a resolution of 800x600 or 1024x768 is much better represented by the denoted ratio scale.

Some maps have limits on the scales at which you can view the data. As well, some layers and/or map labels may only appear at certain scales. We could go into it, but we'll spare you. Suffice to say, you listen to a stereo within a certain range. At a certain volume you can't hear the music any clearer if you make it louder, and at a certain quietness you can't hear it at all, no matter how much lower you turn the volume knob.

There are a few other functions that make navigating around maps easier.

 The first is the Previous Extent tool. It is available either as a button or as a selection  from the function menu. It jumps back to the previous map extent.

 Another operation from the function menu is Zoom to Full Extent. It zooms you out to  the maximum extent of the map.

Zoom to Active Layer Extent zooms to the maximum extent of the active layer and is found in the map function drop-down menu.

Next, you will find out how to make a layer active.

Continue...