Important new features are introduced or strengthened with this version, such as:

• new mode for selecting objects: interactive selection. This allows for the selection and unselection of objects with a mouse click and by means of a transect, ellipse / circle, rectangle / square or polygon
• Web Map Service (WMS) layers support. This is a specification of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) aimed at standardizing access to cartography through browsing Internet-protocol-based systems (Map Browser Systems). MiraMon is now able to directly access the Internet and read enormous layers of continuous cartography (large orthophotos series, etc.) without the need to worry about cartograhic sheets, clipping or mosaicking
• Extraordinary expansion of metadata (conforming with ISO standards, but also reaching beyond them), with capacity to do exports to HTML i XML, with a hierarchical standardized system of keywords, with an Internet metadata catalog management system, as well as multilingual, etc.
• Edition and digitization of structured vector files
• Full support to multiband rasters
• Improvements in tools such as the analytical combination of layers (statistics), buffer generation (vectorial when calculating), IsoMDE (more types of 3D breaklines), etc, or new tools such as hillsading, visibility, image optimization, etc.
• Totally updated help system
• etc.

Any user with a MiraMon license 5 can get the MiraMon update at no charge at the MiraMon Upgrade Service (MUS):
www.creaf.uab.es/miramon/MUS/index.htm
If you are a user of previous versions and have not yet purchased the upgrade to version 5 you may do so at:
www.creaf.uab.es/miramon/order/usa/index.htm
by selecting “Upgrade to MiraMon Version 5”.

As we often like to acknowledge, since its beginnings the development of MiraMon has been made possible by many hours of dedication and personal commitment and, fortunately, MiraMon has been growing and improving through the participation of a solid and enthusiastic group of collaborators, through its intensive use in research projects, through direct funding for specific developments provided by the public and private sectors, and, of course, through licenses and diverse contributions, both economic and in contents, made by new users joining the project every week.

In that respect, we are proud to say that, as of today, we are close to reaching 4000 registered users worldwide belonging to 37 different countries, and that tens of thousands of copies of the MiraMon Map Reader have been distributed through the Internet or in thematic CD-ROMs. Also, thousands of users have MiraMon as their GIS tool for their undergraduate and graduate GIS and Remote Sensing courses in different universities and research centers. Taking into account that the program has only been advertised by non-conventional means—static information on the Internet or simple recommendation from user to user—we are very grateful to the GIS and Remote Sensing community.

We also need to thank the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications, CREAF, which has hosted the project and helped it grow both in quantitative and qualitative terms. CREAF not only provides a home for MiraMon but it also enriches it and corrects it every day with the varied work of its numerous staff on land studies: generating thematic cartography, studying remote sensing images, developing tools for spatial analysis, performing statistics, etc.

The Department of Geography of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) has played an important role in the advancement of the program. There, several people work in key fields for the future development of MiraMon. Worth mentioning are also the students that on a daily basis help us to improve aspects such as the user interface and general functionality.

As always, we have tried to only change those aspects that are really important so that the user does not have to put much effort in the upgrade to this new version. Overall, we try to follow the rule that MiraMon is a program which a user can start to do work with after just a few hours of learning, which provides advanced and complex features and analytical results with a comparatively low effort and whose evolution is not difficult to keep pace with.

This year is our tenth anniversary. There will be a celebration about which we will inform you in due time. In any case, we take this opportunity to thank you again and hope we will continue to enjoy your support.