Visual land-use history and a new brush editor

A new "CLC history" button has appeared in the Land use map's toolbar, opening a window dedicated to every version of the land-use map for the perimeter you are looking at. Until yesterday the platform only showed the current version: maps generated or corrected in the past did exist, but there was no way to look at them again or to understand how the reading of the territory had changed over time. The window offers two ways of looking at the same story. In the List view every version has its own card, with a preview of the map, the name and version number, the date, any note, the type of operation that produced it — automatic generation or manual colouring — and the bar summarising the composition in hectares of the classes present. Badges tell you at a glance which version is the current one and which one is actually drawn on the map right now. In the Stacked view, instead, all the versions are piled into the same frame and you move from one to the next simply by scrolling: the crossfade makes it immediately obvious what changed and where. On the right a clickable timeline takes you straight to the version you care about, and by holding down the space bar — or the dedicated button, on tablets and phones — you get a flash comparison with the previous version. Previews are downloaded only when they are genuinely needed, so the window opens right away even on perimeters with many versions behind them. You will find it all under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, in the "CLC history" button above the map.

The manual editor of the land-use map now has a real toolbar, at the bottom left, appearing as soon as you enter drawing mode. You can pick between brush and eraser with one click: the active tool stays highlighted, so you always know what the next stroke will do. The eraser does not paint a "neutral" colour but genuinely takes the area back to the land-use class underneath, which is exactly what you need when correcting a colouring that went too far. A finer size has joined the brush sizes, meant for refining the edges of an area without spilling into the neighbouring ones. The relationship between drawing and saving has been made explicit too: drawing and publishing are now two separate actions, leaving the pencil publishes nothing and, above all, never silently throws away what you have just traced. At the bottom right the "Confirm" and "Cancel" buttons are opaque and clearly readable even over satellite imagery, and a label warns you when there are changes not yet saved. If you choose to discard, the confirmation is asked right there, inside the editor, with no window opening elsewhere to make you lose your place. You will find the new toolbar under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, by entering the manual editor and turning on drawing mode.

The manual land-use editor finally has a history of changes: you can undo the last stroke and put it back, as many times as you need. Before, a wrong stroke left you with just two options, both awkward: redrawing over it by hand, or discarding the whole working session and starting again from scratch. The "Undo" and "Redo" buttons now sit in the toolbar next to the brush and the eraser, and they switch themselves off when there is nothing left to undo or redo, so you never have to wonder whether your click registered. Every stroke is photographed before being applied, so stepping back gives you exactly the situation you had a moment earlier, colours included. Anyone who prefers the keyboard can use the usual system shortcuts to undo and redo, and the Esc key leaves drawing mode without closing the editor by mistake. The history resets at the start and at the end of every drawing session, so you never find yourself undoing strokes that belong to earlier work. It is a change that makes experimenting far less risky: you can try a correction, look at it on the map and step back in an instant if it does not convince you. You will find it under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, in the manual editor's toolbar.

When you save a manual correction to the land-use map you have to state what the area you coloured will become, choosing the class name from a fairly long list. That menu now has a search field at the top: type a few letters and the list narrows down to the matching entries. The search works on the translated names, so looking for "grassland" or "regeneration" finds the entry even though the list is organised internally in another language, and it works with several words in a row too. Accents are not a problem: you can type without them and the result is the same. The order of the entries stays as it always was, so anyone who has already memorised where their most-used classes sit does not have to learn it again. The menu has also been made stable: it used to close by itself while you were using it, forcing you to reopen it and start the search over. It now stays open until you either pick an entry or close it, and the entry already set shows up correctly selected on opening even when the name arrives in different capitalisation. You will find the picker under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, in the manual editor, at the "Will become" field.

We have fixed the behaviour of the eraser in the land-use editor, which showed one thing while you were working and produced another one when you confirmed. Running the eraser made the area disappear, but the preview did not account for what would resurface from underneath, so the final result could take you by surprise. The editor now shows you exactly what will remain after you confirm: as you run the eraser, the land-use class underneath resurfaces in real time, with its own colour. That turns erasing into an operation you can verify by eye, instead of a leap in the dark to be checked only after saving. The cursor following the pointer also shows a white dashed ring while the eraser is armed, so you cannot mix up the two tools even out of the corner of your eye. We have also sorted out a flaw whereby, when some classes were temporarily hidden to work more comfortably, the original colours could fail to be restored faithfully at saving time. Nothing is required from you, the fixes are already active for everybody. You can check them under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, in the manual editor with the eraser selected.

The brush in the land-use editor no longer leaves a trail of detached blobs when you drag the pointer quickly. Before, the colour was applied only where the system managed to read the pointer's position: moving your hand fast left gaps between one imprint and the next, and filling an area meant going over it several times with slow movements. The intermediate points are now reconstructed automatically, so the stroke is continuous, just as you would expect from a brush, at whatever speed suits you. The result takes less effort and, above all, is more precise, because you no longer have to chase the gaps left behind. Alongside this we have made colour handling more faithful: the map's tints are now kept in a dedicated copy before being temporarily hidden, so when they come back they are exactly the ones you started with. Previously, in some working sequences, that copy could be altered by the changes in progress and the hidden classes came back in slightly different shades. Both fixes are already active and require nothing from you. You will find them under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, in the manual editor.

We have solved three problems that made the search in the class-name menu of the land-use editor practically unusable. The first: typing a few letters left the list empty, because the search compared what you typed against names in a different language from the one on your screen, so searching in your own language found nothing. The second: the field lost the text you had just typed, clearing it by itself after a moment and forcing you to start again. The third: the field lost the cursor while you were typing, with the result that the following letters simply never appeared. Taken together, the three flaws made scrolling the whole list by hand faster than trying to search it. The search now compares what you type against the names in all the platform's languages, the typed text stays where you put it, and the cursor no longer abandons the field. You can also type two or three words in a row to narrow the list further, and safely ignore accents. The fixes are already active: you can check them under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, in the manual editor, by opening the menu of the "Will become" field.

In the Stacked view of the land-use map history, the content below the map frame spilled outside the edges of the window. The cause was the frame's height, worked out from the shape of the perimeter rather than from the space actually available: on very tall and narrow perimeters the map ate up the whole window and pushed whatever came next out of sight. The most annoying effect was that the legend with the class names got cut away entirely, and since it is precisely the legend that explains what the colours mean, the composition bar went back to being an indecipherable strip. The caption with the name, version and date overlapped the bottom of the window too, making it confusing to read. The map now takes the space left over after room has been reserved for the caption, the bar and the legend, which are therefore always visible in full. The perimeter is still framed correctly whatever the shape of the frame, because the framing adapts by itself. We have also removed the duplicated hints line, which appeared both under the map and at the bottom of the window. You will find the fix under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use → CLC history, by switching to the Stacked view.

The Stacked view of the land-use map history no longer rests the versions on a chequerboard background, but on a real satellite map. The benefit is immediate: the coloured classes are read in their actual context, and you can tell straight away whether an area is a warehouse, a row of trees or a meadow. Every version is placed on its own coordinates, so the comparison stays geographically correct even when the site perimeter has been redrawn or re-imported over time. An opacity slider, set to 80% out of the box, lets you dose how much satellite shows through the colours: at maximum you read the classification, lowering it you check the ground underneath. Below the composition bar a legend has appeared with the name of every class, its percentage and the corresponding hectares. That bar used to be a strip of colours with no explanation, and class colours cannot be memorised by eye because they change from project to project. When there are many classes, the smallest ones are gathered into a summary entry, so the legend stays compact and readable. The frame also adapts to the size of the window, so the perimeter always stays in view even when you move from a computer to a tablet. Try it under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use → CLC history, choosing the Stacked view.

Every drawing session in the land-use editor now starts from a known, predictable state: brush selected, widest size. Before, the tool stayed whatever you had left last time, and it could happen that you started drawing convinced you had the brush while the eraser was in fact still armed, wiping out areas you meant to keep. The widest size is the right way to begin, because a broad stroke quickly covers the main area and you then refine by switching to a finer brush. When you leave drawing mode the tool is reset, so the next session starts from the same state regardless of how you ended the previous one. We have also improved using the toolbar from the keyboard and with assistive technology: the controls are now grouped logically, with labels stating what they do and which tool is armed at that moment. This makes the editor usable without a mouse, and much clearer for anyone reading the screen with a screen reader. There is nothing to set up, the behaviour is already active for everybody. You can check it under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, by entering the manual editor.

The menu you use to choose the class name in the land-use editor now has the dark look consistent with the rest of the platform. It previously used colours inherited from another context: a bright yellow on the highlighted entries and a slightly off-axis selection border, which made the menu feel like a foreign element on the page. The text of the button that opens the list was poorly contrasted too, and in some conditions it was nearly illegible against the dark background. The selected name is now written in solid white, while entries, highlights and borders use the same colours as the editor's other windows. The result is a distinctly higher contrast, comfortably within the recommended readability thresholds, useful to anyone working on dim screens or in very bright rooms. Keyboard navigation now highlights the current entry clearly, without the misaligned border of before. These are purely visual changes: the available entries and their order stay identical. You can see them under XNatura → Monitoring → Site → Land use, by opening the manual editor and the menu of the "Will become" field.