More impressive, the screen detail was accomplished without sacrificing display speed. The charts were very sprightly to pan and zoom. We never noticed any lag or blurring. As you pan across a chart edge, TIKI automatically loads the next chart. However, charts are not seamlessly quilted: you see the edge of the chart and then flip to the next chart.

TIKI is designed to navigate chart displays primarily through the Chart Panel pop-up window. You can right-click at any position on the chart and zoom or scale in or out, centering the chart at this position. After the first click on zoom or scale, the chart center position does not change. With the window's arrow buttons you can pan the chart east, west, north or south. You can click once or continue to depress the button to continue panning. The pop-up window's red center button instantly centers the chart on the boat position. (You can also display the boat with maximum view ahead, which shifts the boat position to show more chart area ahead of the predicted course.) If you left-click the red center button for about one second, TIKI selects the best chart for the boat position.

Charts can be opened in up to three chart windows, using a split-screen display. This has now become a common feature of many charting and navigation applications, allowing the display of a chart overview, a zoom and a satellite or aerial view (see photo). TIKI also allows you to link an image file to a chart, such as a photo of an anchorage. TIKITIKI can simultaneously display one, two, or three chart windows. In this example a chart overview (left) and zoom (top right) are complemented by a satellite photo (bottom right).

TIKI Navigator Pro includes a Digital Magnifier feature, similar to the Spyglass Tool included on NavimaQ navigation software for Apple Macs. Clicking and holding the right mouse button invokes the Magnifier tool, which zooms in to the chart scale showing the most detail. Although the feature usually worked great, we found a little bug if you have satellite navigation photo files in your chart folder, such as those available from Maptech. In this case, zooming flipped the display from a chart to a satellite view of wave tops. This glitch, resulting from the fact that aerial and satellite photos are not common in Europe, will be fixed in the next point release, Jenssen said.

We had no trouble creating waypoints and routes with TIKI Navigator Pro. The Pro version accommodates an unlimited number of routes, each with 500 waypoints. Each route shows the cumulative distance at each waypoint, which is a nice detail. The Pro version of TIKI also includes features such as logbook, tracking and creating routes from tracks.

If you already have a large collection of waypoints and routes, TIKI's data exchange is not as fully developed as its user interface. You can export waypoints and routes to your GPS using the freeware EasyGPS we mentioned above. However, you currently cannot import waypoints and routes created in another application or from your GPS.

TIKI also does not include a chart manager. All charts are contained in one big "bucket," which as we have mentioned in previous reviews, slows down the start-up time. Similarly, there is no waypoint manager to group waypoints into subset folders to keep them organized.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

TIKI Navigator Pro integrates with several vessel instruments, including wind speed and direction indicators, knot/log, compass, depth sounder, autopilot and AIS receiver. However, it does not have the capability to display tide and current predictions or weather downloads. A feature allowing GRIB weather downloads is scheduled for a future version, Jenssen said.