Running QGIS for the first time
By default, QGIS will use the operating system's default language. To follow the tutorials in this book, it is advisable to change the language to English by navigating to Settings | Options | Locale. On the first run, the toolbars are arranged in two rows and depending on your screen resolution, this can hide many buttons. To be able to work efficiently, I therefore suggest arranging the toolbars. I like to put some toolbars to the left and right screen borders to save vertical screen estate—especially on wide-screen displays.
Additionally, we activate the file browser by navigating to View | Panels | Browser. It will provide us quick access to our spatial data. In the end, your screen should look similar to the following screenshot:
Next, we activate some must-have plugins by navigating to Plugins | Manage and Install Plugins. Plugins are activated by ticking the checkbox beside their name. To begin with, I recommend the following:
- Coordinate Capture: This plugin is useful for picking coordinates in the map
- fTools: This plugin offers vector analysis and management tools
- GdalTools: This plugin offers raster analysis and management tools
- Processing: This plugin provides access to many useful raster and vector analysis tools as well as a model builder for task automation
To make it easier to find specific plugins, we can filter the list of plugins using the Search input field at the top of the window, which you can see in the following screenshot:
