General Programming Question

[Guest temple11]

I'm not much of a programmer at all. At best I have been able to reverse engineer a few PHP sites and PERL scripts to make them do what I want but now I have a project and I'm looking for some advice.I'm not sure what the best langage to use and any nudges in a particular direction would be appreciated.Project:I would like to create a clickable map of the united states, such that when one state is selected (clicked) a number of other states that satisfy a criteria (like friend lives in, or reciprocal prescription drug plan exists) turn a different color (red). Then if a red state was clicked you would be sent to an information page about that state as it pertains to the originally selected state.I'm at a loss as to where I should start and would appreciate any advice anyone has.Thanks!

[Chocolate570]

It's possible...but it would be best done in Flash. With javascript, you'd have to have 100 different images and a LOT of typing. Each state would have to have 2 images per: selected, and deselected. Also, for each state, you'd have to write an array with the other states that have to be selected when the current state is selected. In flash, you'd still have as much coding, but it wouldn't take forever to load, and you wouldn't have to make all of those images.Just my $.02.

[justsomeguy]

Flash isn't a bad way to go for that. You can store your data in an XML file, and if you want you could create a PHP page that will read and write the XML to let you edit it easily.

[smiles]

Then if a red state was clicked you would be sent to an information page about that state

like somthing in my signature

[Skemcin]

one of the more popular methods that folks will begin to experiment with on this type of requirement might be a combination of AJAX and [insert your server side scripting language here] - coldfusion, asp, php, jsp, ruby on rails.All your state information would be in a database that your application would query based on the input (click of state or keyword search). AJAX would allow you to have a click get the information and return the results while swapping the image of any state that met the criteria.Of course, this can be done without AJAX and just any scripting language if you don't mind page load with each request (which is what everyone is used to these days anyway). All in all, I personally feel it would be easier to do in (for me) ColdFusion. But you could have a more professional presentation in flash:http://www.pedialink.org/emb/files/multime...istics_anim.swf