Marble virtual globe

Bookmarks

In Marble, you can set bookmarks for frequently visited sites, which can be useful if you have a relative in Sydney or your geography teacher is covering a particular region of the world.

To set bookmarks, navigate to the desired spot and set an appropriate zoom level. From the main menu, select Bookmarks | Add Bookmark . Marble opens a window where you can specify a name for the bookmark in the topmost field. Wait a second before you enter a name, because Marble first suggests a name based on the geographic coordinates.

In the background, Marble also searches for the country to which the location belongs. If it finds it, Marble proposes that name instead.

To create the bookmark, just click OK . Then, Marble marks it on the map with a little yellow star (Figure 5). If the markers bother you, simply remove them by clicking Bookmarks | Show Bookmarks .

Figure 5: The yellow star marks the bookmark position. You would use pins on a real map.

You'll find all bookmarks listed in the Bookmarks menu under Standard . If you click a bookmark name, it immediately takes you there. The list can become unwieldy if you have too many bookmarks defined. You can solve this problem by organizing them into groups.

To create groups, open Bookmarks | Manage Bookmarks . On the left of the new window, you will see a list of folders.

At first, the only folder available is named Standard . Opening this folder displays all its bookmarks to the right, which you can then highlight, Edit , or Delete .

You can add a new folder using New . If a folder is already selected, the new folder becomes its subfolder. If you add another bookmark, you can drop it into one of these folders. The folders show up in the main menu as items under Bookmarks .

On Your Way

To show the route between two locations, go to the Routing tab at the bottom of the sidebar. In the A field, enter the starting location, upon which Marble lists all the matching places below it. If you click on one of them, Marble will mark it on the map.

You can alternatively enter a bookmark name in the entry field by clicking the green circle with the A in it and select the bookmark under Bookmarks . If you choose From Map , your point turns to a crosshair, and you can select the starting point location from the map. Marble then picks the nearest town and drags it into the A entry field. Marble also marks the starting point on the map with a green A icon, which you can always drag and drop to another location. As soon as the starting point is established, specify the ending point in the B field in a similar way (be sure you select the correct Lawrence).

The next step is deciding which mode of transport to adopt. In the drop-down menu under the B field, you can choose Car, Bike, or Pedestrian. With a car, you can be specific about shortest or fastest . They are not the same: A roundabout highway route can take you someplace faster than a shortest route. Try both ways if you're not sure.

Clicking Get Directions sets the route in motion and draws a blue line between the two points. Change to a road map (using View | OpenStreetMap ) so that highways are delineated and side streets are marked (Figure 6).