Help for first time NT GoMap Users

What is NT GoMap?

Our next generation geoportal - an advanced web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) application for viewing, querying, and downloading from our vast database of mineral occurrences, publications, exploration reports, and other references to geology and mineral exploration in the NWT. NT GoMap is designed to provide quick and easy access to our distrubutable spatial data.

NT GoMap Resources:

• NT GoMap Users Guide
• NT GoMap Query Guide
  
  

Browser Requirements to run NT GoMap:

• Introduction
• Common pop-up blockers
• Add NT GoMap to your Trusted Sites
• Disable IE's pop-up blocker
• Enable Javascript
• Initialize ActiveX controls
• Allow download prompting
• Enable cookies
  
  

Introduction:

At this time, NT GoMap only supports Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer. Support for other popular Internet browsers is currently under development. The NT GoMap team apologizes for this inconvenience

NT GoMap works best with a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher but will also function properly with 800 x 600 resolution, although the interface components will be enlarged, making the map window smaller.

NT GoMap requires specific browser settings to be set in order to function properly. If you are using Internet Explorer, it is strongly recommended that you add NT GoMap to your trusted sites list. By doing this, you can keep the pop-up blocker and other security-related settings enabled for standard Internet activity, but have them turned off for trusted sites.

The following instructions step you through configuring the required browser settings. They are specific to Internet Explorer 7 but are also applicable to previous versions.

Common pop-up blockers:

Besides Internet Explorer's integrated pop-up blocker, there may be other third-party pop-up blockers installed on your system that will prevent NT GoMap from functioning normally. Listed below are some of the more popular pop-up blockers and instructions on how to disable them in order to view NT GoMap. In general, most pop-up blockers will install themselves either within the browser toolbar, or within the Windows system tray (located in the bottom right corner of your screen).

Microsoft Internet Explorer:
Pop-up blocking was first integrated into Internet Explorer 6 with the release of Microsoft’s Service Pack 2 and is now a standard feature of Internet Explorer 7. By default pop-up blocking is enabled in IE6 SP2 and IE7. Follow the instructions in the IE pop-up blocker section below to disable IE's integrated pop-up blocker.

Google Toolbar:
To disable pop-up blocking, right-click on the toolbar. A drop-down menu will appear with a listing of all of the toolbars. Uncheck the "Google" entry.

Yahoo Toolbar:
To disable pop-up blocking, click on the Down arrow to bring up the options menu and uncheck the entry "Enable Pop-Up Blocker".

MSN Toolbar:
To disable pop-up blocking, click on the Down arrow to the right of the text to bring up the menu. Cick on "Allow Pop-ups".

AOL Toolbar:
To disable pop-up blocking, click on the "Pop-Up" icon.

PopUpCop:
PopUpCop installs as a toolbar . To disable pop-up blocking, click on the arrow to the right of the badge to display a menu with a list of options. Click on "Disable the blocker".

To add NT GoMap to your trusted sites list:

Select Tools > Internet Options from the menu bar .

Choose the Security tab and select the "Trusted sites" content zone. Click the Sites button.

Uncheck the box "Require server verification (https://) for all sites in this zone" and add "http://ntgomap.nwtgeoscience.ca" as a trusted site .

Click the Close button to exit the Trusted sites dialog box.

Disable the IE pop-up blocker for trusted sites:

Ensure that Trusted sites is still selected under the Security tab in Internet Options and click on the "Custom level" button.

To disable the pop-up blocker, Scroll down and ensure that "Use Pop-up Blocker" is disabled.

Enable Javascript for trusted sites:

To ensure that Javascript is enabled (it should be on by default), scroll down to the Scripting section and ensure that "Active Scripting" is enabled.

Use our Javascript detector to confirm that Javascript is working.

Initialize ActiveX controls for trusted sites:

Certain features of NT GoMap require that ActiveX controls are initialized. Scroll down and ensure that "Initialize and script ActiveX controls not makred as safe" is enabled.

Allow download prompting for trusted sites:

To prevent IE from blocking downloads from NT GoMap, you should enable automatic prompting for downloads. To do this, scroll down and ensure that "Automatic prompting for file downloads" is enabled.

Click the Close button to exit the Custom Security Settings dialog box.

Enable Cookies for trusted sites:

Certain features of NT GoMap require that Cookies are enabled (by default, Cookies are already enabled when the Security level is set to Medium-high or less). To ensure that Cookies are enabled, choose the Privacy tab and click the Advanced button.

Verify that at least First-party Cookies are accepted.

Click OK and exit the Internet Options dialog and restart Internet Explorer.

Key features of NT GoMap:

• Powerful search, display, and download capability.

• Custom query screens and results pages are designed specifically for mineral showings, references, and geophysical/geochemical metadata (G-Meta).  GoMap will soon incorporate specific query screens for our diamond database.

• Create custom formatted maps for printing and email.

• Ability to download our distributable geoscience data as Shapefiles (in any chosen projection) and as formatted text files.

• Integration with Gateway, our reports and publications web application, to help locate specific publications and add them to your downloadable shopping cart.

• View large digital publications and compilations as a representative georeferenced image which can be integrated and layered with the topographic base and other geoscience layers.

• Ability to perform spatial queries such as containment, proximity, adjacency, and contiguity.  These spatial searches can be combined with our unique geoscience query options to provide powerful attribute and spatial based search capability.

• GoMap incorporates a large variety of digital spatial data sources including ESRI’s SDE, CGDI-endorsed services (Web Map Services, and Web Feature Services), Shapefiles, georeferenced images (ECW, GeoTIFF).

• NT GoMap shares spatial data with other geoportals. Many topographic layers such as lakes and rivers are pulled-in from the NWT Geospatial warehouse geoportal. Spatial data from the NWT Mining Recorders office (e.g. mineral claims, leases, and prospecting permits) will be added soon.

• Our NORMIN References database has been enabled for searching via the Canadian Geographic Data Infrastruture (CGDI) framework.  CGDI-compliant web gateways such and GeoConnections and the Canadian Geological Knowledge Network (CGKN) are capable of searching and retrieving detailed citations of NTGO’s published reports over the web.

• NT GoMap implements many Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) endorsed standards such as US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and International Standards Organization (ISO) metadata, Open GIS Consortium (OGC) metadata discovery via Canadian Geoscience Knowledge Network (CGKN) and GeoConnections portals and OGC web map services.

Launch NT GoMap now!