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[Paco]

I am very new to the world of cartography. I didn't even know that integrating maps with the web was such a science but I am starting to understand why. I come from the mass thinking that maps on the web start and end with google maps. But these past couple of days I have been pleasantly surprised that this is not always the case.

I have a small projet that I am working on and I would appreciate your comments and suggestions on how to do it.

The map part of the project should be extremely simple, but it's like I haven't found the right tool yet.

I want to cram the whole world into a 200*130px box. I want the user to be able to move around and zoom in on the map to find where they are located (approximately within a 50~100 mile radius) and I want there to be a pin that they can drag and drop where they see fit.

That's it. It is a symbolic map only. The real coordinates will be got most likely based on ip and entered into google maps for the client to view. This mini map will however have to fit in with the rest of the widget design which will containg many other features.

Here are the alternatives I thought of.

* customize a gmap - I have a friend who looked into it and said it could be done BUT making the custom "drop-pin" function wasn't the easiest thing since he'd have to dive into the gmap api language and secondly gmaps cannot easily be designed colorwise to fit another color palette.
* just making a easy flash game of my own with say 3 zoom notches and a simple drag'n'drop feature. - constructing the actual map seems like a huge job.
* ammap.com have a free version that I've been looking at. - It is the best looking one I have found so far and the colors can easily be customized BUT I am not sure if I can add the dgrag'n'drop pin function. Also it seems like it only outlines countries and not states, so the US is one huge one colored blob and it would be hard for the user to make out their location even within a 50~100 mile radius


That's how far I've got. All I think I need is someone to tell me "Silly boy all you have to do is this .."

Thanks in advance!

[Paco]

bump.

Okay so ammap does not allow any kind of drag'n'drop feature