A layer is visible on the map if there is a tick in the square next to it under the heading 'Visible'. You can turn layers on or off by clicking in the square.

After you turn a layer on or off, hit the Refresh Map button to update the map.

By default, some layers may be turned on and others may be turned off when you initially open the map.

In our example above, you can see that all the layers except 'Zoning' are turned on. You can also see that 'Cadastre' is 'Active'.

What the heck does that mean? It means that the spotlight is on this layer. In other words, this is our way of telling the computer that this is the layer we are interested in. How is this relevant, you ask?

Boy, you ask a lot of questions. Read on.

Suppose you are interested in the elevation of a particular location that you have zoomed into. First, you ensure that the layer with elevation attributes is the active layer (see the above lesson to do this). In this case, 'Contours' is made active.

The Identify tool allows you to get attribute information about a feature by clicking on it. You select the Identify tool to click on the feature whose attributes you want to examine.

The attributes for that feature then appear in the attribute panel. If they do not appear, make sure that the feature you are clicking on is part of the layer that is active.

The elevation of this location is 60 metres. Don't worry; the attributes you encounter will probably not have cryptic field names like those you see in this example.

 By clicking the Toggle Legend/Layer List button when the layer list is displayed, the legend appears instead. To see the layer list again, press the button again.

If it isn't useful, you can easily switch it off. Just press the Hide/Show Inset button you see here. Press it again, and it's back. Isn't technology marvelous?

Do not hit the 'Print' button on your Internet browser.

Instead, press the Print button on the toolbar.

You will be prompted to type in a title for your map. By default, the title is "ArcIMS 3.0 HTML Viewer Map". Catchy isn't it? After you type in a new title, press Create Print Page and a new window will come up.

This new window contains is a 8.5"x11" map for printing.

Now you can use the Internet Browser 'Print' button because the new window does not contain a linked interactive map. Simply print it as you would any other page on your computer, but make sure you set it to print landscape (sideways). The required steps depend on your printer, but they should be fairly straightforward. Once you have printed the map, close the window and you'll be back to the Geographic Data Viewer interactive map.

First, click on the Copy Map Image to File button.

The following window will be displayed at the bottom of your browser window.

Type a name for the image in the Title field. This title will be displayed at the top of the saved map image. Specify where you want to save the image in the Filepath field. In this example, the file will be stored in the c:/temp directory under the name mapImage_82303.jpg. When finished, press the Save button.

If you have been following the tutorial; Congratulations! You are finished the really important section. Pretty painless, wasn't it?

At this point you can go look at a map and use what you just learned or you can continue on with the next section of the tutorial. This optional section will guide you through tasks like measuring distances, finding particular records, and conducting some simple queries.

I'd like to take a look at the optional section of the tutorial.