well, what your talking is Ajax. If you are like me though and are lazy and dont want to go through tweaking all your code do it like this. 1) add an iframe at the bottom of the page.
2)when someone clicks on the map or whatever, fire an event to change the url of the iframe and reload...here is code:
<a href="#" onClick="document.getElementById('myframe').href='http://mydomain.com/myphppage.php?id=1'">click me</a>
3)on the php have a javascript function tied to the onload for that page. example:
<script language='javascript'>
function tellParentIloaded(){
var = myVarsFromPHP;
parent.parentFunctionToChangeFormElements(myVarsFromPHP);
}
4)on the origional page add your javascript to handle the request:
<script language='javascript'>
function parentFunctionTochangeFormElements(myVars){
//javascript to change form based on the values
//given by the iframe that just loaded with your
//php data
}
5) Your done!
SUMMARY:
Add iframe to bottom of page where you pass variables to a php page via the url. That pages does some work and sends back data via a javascript tied to the onload comand.
