Sirius 7 Online Mapper DEMO

Sirius 7 Online Mapper DEMO : Quick Help

Please Note :
At this time, full documentation for the Online Mapper is not available as it remains under development.
This guide provides a quick overview of the current features, which may change or be added to in the release version.

System Requirements

The Online Mapper requires that the Java Plugin is installed.
(At least version 1.4.2_09 is required, but modern versions will perform better.)
If the Online Mapper doesn't work, or displays a warning that you have an old Java version, we recommend you use the latest version which is available from the above link.
You will need to restart your browser after installing the plugin.

Opening Projects and Views

The Online Mapper employs a concept of Projects and Project Views.

A Project is the basic definition of a map, e.g. it determines what geometries it contains and what the thematic data source is.

A Project View is a customised view of a Project.
For example, it may be zoomed to a particular area of the map, have different thematic colours / ranges, selectively hide certain geometries and be labelled in a certain way.

Projects are presented on the Online Mapper's main page as a series of hyperlinks in a table.
They are sorted in creation (or last edit) order, most recent first.
To open a given project, simply click on its hyperlink.

A given Project may have one or more Project Views associated with it. Any which exist will appear indented beneath the Project. This is illustrated below.

A Project View is opened in the same way, by clicking on its hyperlink.
(Users of the Online Mapper may create their own Project Views, via the Save and Share Project View feature.)

Panning and Zooming

Right-Click somewhere on the map to centre and zoom in on that point.

To Pan the map, click the corresponding Pan button. These are highlighted below.

To Zoom the map in or out, click the "Zoom In 20%" or "Zoom Out 20%" buttons. These are highlighted below.

To Zoom the map to the extents of the "thematic" geometry, i.e. that geometry to which thematic colours are applied, press the "Zoom To Extents" button. This is highlighted below.

Refreshing the map

To provide faster user responsiveness, the Online Mapper sometimes does not fully redraw the map. If this causes an incomplete map, press the Space bar (with the Online Mapper window selected) to refresh it.
Alternatively, any activity which changes the map such as panning should correct this.

The Project Menu

The Project Menu, located at the top left of the Online Mapper, provides the following options.

Save Project View
This saves the current "View" of the map, with whatever changes you have made to it, to your local computer only.
Next time you open the underlying project, the Online Mapper will offer to load this View.

Save and Share Project View
This is similar to Save Project View, but in addition it also publishes your project View to the Online Mapper server you are using. This view will then appear on the Online Mapper project page, indented below the Project which it is derived from. (You may need to refresh the Online Mapper project page in your browser to see the new View.) See Project and View explanation.
Any user who has access to the Online Mapper server can then load this "Shared" view, and may create their own variant of it by the same method.

Create Shortcut to View
This feature creates a shortcut on your Desktop, which will open a map identical in appearance to the current view if it is double clicked.
(Please note that this feature does not create a Project View in the normal sense, like 'Save Project View' and 'Save and Share Project View' do.)
The primary purpose of this feature is that the shortcuts it creates can be dragged and dropped (with the left mouse button) into applications such as Microsoft^© Word and PowerPoint^©. The result of this is icons embedded into documents which can be double clicked by anyone with access to the Online Mapper to open the corresponding map.

Load Project View
When a Project with locally saved views is initially opened, the Online Mapper offers to open one of them for you. Should you decline but later wish to open one, this feature allows you to do so.

Copy View to Clipboard
This copies an image of the current map view, including project title and thematic legend, to the clipboard. This can then be pasted into any program which supports image pasting, e.g. Microsoft^© Word or Powerpoint^©.
This feature can be used in conjunction with "Create Shortcut to View", to create a document with both a static image of a map and a link to the live version. An example of how this might appear in Word is shown below.

The Thematic Options Menu

Change Colours
Allows the "start" (lowest value) and "end" (highest value) thematic colours to be changed. The initial colours of the new ranges will be determined by progressively "ramping" from the first to last colour.

Change Number of Ranges
Changes the number of thematic ranges. The initial colours of the new ranges will be determined by progressively "ramping" from the first to last colour, and they will be equal in size.

Edit Ranges
A more advanced feature which allows the exact Colour and Extent (start / end) of each range to be edited. Click the coloured buttons to change range colours.
Note that when changing range extents, you are only able to edit the From values. The To values are corrected when you finish editing the corresponding From, and / or after you OK the range editor.

Decimal Places
When showing Theme Value labels for data with fractional parts, control how many decimal places the data is shown to.

The View Data menu

Show Theme Legend
Toggles whether the thematic legend is visible. (By default, it is.)

Show Table of Values
Toggles whether the Table of Values, i.e. the thematic data underlying the thematic map, is visible. (By default it is not.)

Copy Data to Clipboard
Copies the data used for the thematic map, i.e. the contents of the Table of Values, to the system clipboard. It can then be pasted into an application such as Microsoft^© Excel.
(This feature will also display the Table of Values if it has not been opened yet.)

The Feature Options Menu

This menu consists of two parts : a submenu for each geometry loaded in the current project, and the entry "Auto-hide features" which is always at the bottom.

Auto-hide features automatically controls whether geometries are visible or not based on their line thickness and the current zoom level, i.e. a map with several detailed geometries initially at low zoom would hide some of them, then progressively reveal them as the view is zoomed in.
Please note that auto-hide features is on by default, and the visibility of individual geometries cannot be manually changed while it is.

Show this feature. Controls whether this geometry feature (and its labels, if any are enabled) is shown or not.
Please note that this option does not exist for the Thematic geometry (the first one listed) because it is always shown at present. Also, this option will be greyed out and disabled if Auto-Hide geometries is turned on (see above).

Show Names.
Toggle Name labels for this geometry.

Show References.
Toggle Reference labels for this geometry.

Show Theme Values (Thematic Geometry only)
Toggles thematic value labels on the thematic geometry.

Change Font Size.
Change the font size of any labels which exist on this geometry.

The Print Menu

Print ... This brings up a standard print dialog for your platform, allowing the current view to be printed.

Print Preview Shows an approximate preview of how the map will appear when printed. This preview features a Print button to allow printing without having to go back to the menu.

Page Setup Brings up a standard page setup dialog for your platform.
Please note : Some of the map will be omitted unless the page orientation is left on Landscape. (The Online Mapper will warn you if you change it.) We suggest therefore that this feature is only used to change the paper size, if neccessary.

Advanced Page Setup This lets you select whether the Table of Values, Theme Legend and project title should be included in print outs. Note that only those items which exist will be included, e.g. if no theme legend is active it will not be printed regardless.

The Advanced Menu

Smooth Drawing (slower)
Changes drawing of the map to an alternate system whereby the whole map is drawn "at once" rather than progressively. This produces a little less flicker, however it is significantly slower. Therefore this is disabled by default.

Cache Management
To speed up map loading and minimise network traffic, the Online Mapper saves a local copy of the geometries in each project. The next time the project is loaded, the geometry data is read from this local copy instead of the network. This is known as 'caching'.
Sometimes it may be neccessary to delete the cached files for a project. For example if there was an error discovered in a project's geometry which was then corrected on the server, it would be neccessary to delete the cached version in order to force the corrected version to be downloaded. This may be done via the Cache Management feature.

As shown, the cache manager presents a scrollable list of all the projects which are cached on the local system. To delete ('clean') a project's cached files, simply select it and press the "Clean Selected" button. The Manager will close when the "Done" button on the Manager is pressed, or when there are no further cached projects.

Please note : If you have saved Project Views locally only via the "Save Project View" feature, then clean the cache for their associated project, they will be removed. Shared Views created by "Save and Share Project View" will remain accessible online, however.