Working with Vector Data - Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools - page 38

Figure 3.8: Nicely rendered world_borders layer
layer. Let's make the land a light brown color. Click the color box to the
right of Fill Color, and choose a color from the selector. We'll do the
same with the outline for the countries, in this case choosing a nice
blue color. Once you made the selections, you can hit Apply to see the
changes or OK to accept the changes and close the dialog box.
One last thing before you see the results. QGIS allows you to set a
background color for the map canvas. Often this can be used to improve
the appearance of the map, especially when you have large areas of
white space. To set a background color, choose Project Properties from
the Settings menu. To set the color, activate the General tab, and then
click the color box to the right of the Background Color label. Close
the dialog box, and refresh the map. The result of all the changes, as
shown in Figure 3.8 , shows a nice light blue ocean and the countries of
the world neatly delineated.
Here are a couple of things to note about the result. We changed the
name of the layer from its arcane world_borders to World. We also entered
“Countries” in the Label field in the properties dialog box. Note that this
label shows up to the right of our symbol box in the legend.