The Maps area of Solar Fire X has been radically reprogrammed to work interactively with online-only mapping resources, Providing you are on the web, Maps will automatically access the Maps system you choose. For best results, and ease of use, work with the default Google Maps.
Working this way offers innumerable advantages. The places found are as many as in your familiar route finder. The local language script appears in the place names alongside the English spelling. You can zoom into a house in a street, even use the Google tool possibly to see the front door. You can zoom out to the whole world. [NOTE, ignore and zoom back, if more than one world appears!] The normal mouse operation will control all this, or click the + or - symbols at the corner of the map.
As the mouse moves across the map, technical information will appear when it crosses a glyph. If you choose the I button [see more details here] and then click the glyph, or click a glyph on the top and side bars, pop-up interpretations will appear.
As you include more options, maybe Planetary Directions, Midpoints etc., loading may slow a little. Do not keep clicking, just wait for the changes to load. This is especially important if you are zooming in and out of the Map. If symbols do not match lines, zoom in and they will - exactly when you need to look that closely.
While benefiting from these and many other advantages, experienced users of previous versions of Solar Maps may find operations and menu options unfamiliar. Some have been changed to ease operation, or maybe due to the considerations needed, when not basing mouse-generated actions on an old-style solid map.
Play around! Explore the possibilities. Use the updated manual that follows to help you.
