ITC-CRIB / qgis-light

QGIS made simple - a light user interface for core GIS functions.
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QGIS Light

QGIS made simple - a light user interface for core GIS functions.

QGIS is a great GIS software loaded with a lot of data visualization and analysis capabilities. This makes it a suitable tool for GIS experts and alike. But QGIS is also used by a large group of less technical people, and it is not uncommon that they encounter difficulties in using the "complex" interface of QGIS that is full of toolbars, panels, and processing algorithms.

QGIS Light plugin aims to facilitate getting a simple QGIS interface, that is tailored to the needs of basic users. Our starting point was to support secondary education and citizen science activities. But a basic interface might also be useful for anybody that requires core data visualization, editing, and analysis functionality.

How to simplify the QGIS interface?

[!NOTE] For the first time you try the plugin, we suggest you to create a profile and use it before activating the plugin. If something goes wrong, you can switch to the default profile to revert changes.

What is the scope of the simplifications?

The target group we considered for the simplifications is follows:

What are the simplifications?

We checked all menus, toolbars, panels, and processing algorithms in detail to identify non-essential or duplicated components. We grouped remaining essential components for better usability.

The following simplifications are performed by the plugin:

Most of the simplifications listed above can be customized by editing the config.json file located under the plugin source code directory.

Why there is a need for a plugin for the simplifications?

QGIS offers options for user interface customization, such as Interface Customization... dialog that allows users to remove interface components they are not interested in. There is also the CustomToolBar plugin available to create custom toolbars by using the existing tools. However, any further customization, such as creating dropdown tool buttons, requires custom scripting.

What else can be simplified?

Probably many other components. It is not exhaustive, but while working on the plugin we identified a list of issues that hinder better user experience, such as inconsistent terminology, similar tools with different set of parameters, tools with very similar names but performing different tasks, tools that might be easily incorporated in e.g. raster calculator, etc.

You can check the slides of our QGIS User Conference 2024 talk on "QGIS for Secondary Education and Citizen Science: Lowering the barrier by customizing the user interface" available on Zenodo, or watch the video recording of the talk for more details.

Having a critical look at the existing user interface elements and streamlining a refined and standardized user experience might be beneficial for QGIS. This will also facilitate initiatives like simplification.

Acknowledgements

Serkan Girgin initiated the idea and developed the plugin. Jay Gohil and Indupriya Mydur contributed to the analysis of the components that were simplified.