ProFantasy's Map-Making Archive

The Sidebar

CC4 adds a sidebar to the interface that makes much more information directly accessible. You can see which entities are selected, modify that selection and do command operations directly from there.

The new sidebar, which is of course configurable and can be turned on and off, is a new area of the interface which lists information on the current command and all the entities that you have selected. You can see whether anything is not supposed to be there and remove it with a simple click.

Say you want to delete several tree symbols, but they are all mixed up with other entities like roads, rivers and background polygons. You are not sure which layers they are all on and checking that to select by layers would just be time-consuming. You can now just select everything in the general area and de-select entities by clicking on them in the list in the sidebar. See the example on the right for how this appears.

The sidebar also lists the options the current command would give you for selecting additional entities, making those options much more quickly accessible. In the example on the right, once you are happy with your selected entities, you can click on the Do It button to execute the Erase command.

If you are placing symbols, the sidebar will display all the symbol options you are usually getting by right-clicking, making them visible at a glance while the symbol itself is also still visible.

The sidebar can also display the colour palette for easy reference, and more options will be added in the future to expand its capabilities.