User Interface Overview Supporting tagline
QGIS User Interface overview
Quantum GIS User Interface is mainly composed of 5 parts as shown below:
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The Menu bar provides access to various QGIS features using a standard hierarchical menu.
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The toolbars provide access to most of the same functions as the menus, plus additional tools for interacting with the map. Each toolbar item has popup help available. Hold your mouse over the item and a short description of the tool’s purpose will be displayed. Every menubar can be moved around according to your needs. Additionally every menubar can be switched off using your right mouse button context menu holding the mouse over the toolbars.
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The map legend area lists all the layers in the project. The checkbox (see next tutorials) in each legend entry can be used to show or hide the layer. A layer can be selected and dragged up or down in the legend to change the z-ordering. Z-ordering means that layers listed nearer the top of the legend are drawn over layers listed lower down in the legend.
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The map view area is the ’business end’ of QGIS - maps are displayed in this area! The map displayed in this window will depend on the vector and raster layers you have chosen to load (see sections that follow for more information on how to load layers). The map view can be panned (shifting the focus of the map display to another region) and zoomed in and out.
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The status bar displays among others your current position in map coordinates (e.g meters or decimal degrees) as the mouse pointer is moved across the map view. The geographical/cartographic projection used is displayed on the right part of the status bar as well.