As so often happens with brand new features, a few users have quickly uncovered some problems. I have made a number of improvements and all issues have now been resolved. If you have already used the new compression function, please update to 2.61 and re-create your .FC2 files. Many thanks to Gert Botha from TGIS, who repeatedly tested the compression on some large and complex maps and provided me with rapid feedback.

I am very happy to announce the release of version 2.60 of PlanetGIS. This is the fifth update since my last general announcement in July. I spend most of my time working on PlanetGIS 3.0, but every now and then a new function developed for PlanetGIS 3.0 sneaks into an update of 2.x. Version 2.60 is special because it contains a new feature compression technology which was developed for PlanetGIS 3.0. You can now backup or distribute your maps in a compressed format which is between 10 and 25% of the original size. The maps on www.planetgis.co.za have all been updated to this new format and you will notice that where, for example, the Places of South Africa map used to be 105MB (zipped), it is now 21MB (zipped)! You can view the full changelog here.