This is the first of a series of articles that will introduce changes we are making for the Coastal Explorer 2010 release. Coastal Explorer 2010 includes a major overhaul of the Planning Mode user interface which hasn’t really changed that much since Coastal Explorer 1.1 was released nearly five years ago (and even it wasn’t much different from Coastal Explorer 1.0).

The goal of the Coastal Explorer 2010 user interface is to make existing features more discoverable and to enable new features to be added in a logical way over the next five or so years. It is also designed to fit in better with advances in Windows user interfaces in general, such as Windows 7 and Office 2010.

Here are some points to notice about that screen shot:

1. The menu bar is gone! The menu items that were there have been moved to various places of the user interface depending on how the command is used. For example, all of the commands that control the chart display have been moved to the menu button on the chart panels. This makes it possible to control each chart panel in a split-screen configuration and makes these options work the same in both Planning and Cruising modes. Some other commands were only there to show browsers and they have been moved to the tabs described next, and other commands are now on the “main menu” which is the first button on row of tabs.

2. Tabs have been added across the top of the window! Since version 1.1 Coastal Explorer has used “browsers” to provide access to navigation objects, tide predictions, weather forecasts, and guide book information. However it has not always been obvious how to get to the browsers since access was via a drop-down list on the toolbar. The new tabs provide clear and direct access to each of the main browsers.

3. The status bar is gone! We’ve combined the status bar and the tab bar so that when your mouse is pointing at the chart, you see information about what the mouse cursor is pointing at. If you stop moving mouse for around 15 seconds, or move the mouse off of the chart, then the status bar turns back into the tabs. Since the tab bar is taller than the old status bar, we have more room to display information. So we’ve made some of the text bigger and added a few other things like the title of chart you are pointing at and the ETA to the location at the cursor.

A few other things that aren’t obvious from the screen shot, but are worth pointing out:

1. The Tide and Current Prediction, and Weather Forecast browsers have been combined into a single “Conditions” browser. This cuts down on “top-level user interface clutter” and gives us an obvious place to add some great new conditions-oriented features that are also coming in 2010. A future article will describe the new browsers in more detail.

2. Occasionally Coastal Explorer has something to tell you or ask you about while you might be in the middle of doing something. For example, you might start downloading a bunch of new charts and then go about planning a new route. When the download has completed, Coastal Explorer will start installing the charts which might interrupt your planning. Now Coastal Explorer will use the tab bar area to prompt you for permission to install charts. Unlike a traditional Windows message box which will interrupt you and demand a response, the message in the tab bar will simply give you the option of installing the charts now by clicking a button. You do not need to answer; ignore it and it will go away after a few seconds.

3. The old Coastal Explorer normally had a menu bar, two tool bars, and a status bar across the screen. This took up more space than the new tab bar and toolbar, so there is always a bit more space for the chart now. When a browser is open, the old Coastal Explorer used up space for that browser and its title/tool bar while the new Coastal Explorer replaces the standard toolbar with the one for that browser so even more space is saved.

4. The Search Task Pane is gone! Searching now happens as you type into the search box and the results are shown in a popup that appears right below the search box. (This is more like the way Cruise Mode searching worked in Coastal Explorer 2009, but with the extra information that has always been provided in the Search Task Pane.) When you are done with the search box, the results go away but can be seen again by clicking on the icon in the search box.

Cruise Mode benefits from the new user interface design too, but we’ll talk about that in a different article. For now I’ll just say that there is a lot more space for the chart and less for the user interface.