Display large map on website

[numnutz]

I have a rather large map (in Gif Format), that I wish to display on a webpage. The size of the map is around 10,000 pixels square (at a conservative estimate) obviously this is too big for most people to download in a reasonable time. And so my idea is to split the map up into square blocks of around 200 pixels each and display 9 of these smaller pictures in a 3x3 table matrix. This would make the map somewhat similar to commercial map sites like streetmap.co.uk and multimap.com. To navigate around the map the user would just click little triangles at the edge of the main picture. I don't need to display the complete map at once or zoom in or out. I have tried using a flash script for this task but the results were not really satisfactory.

I would assume I need to use some sort of an array object but I haven't got a clue of where to start, and so if anyone has any advice or can point me in the direction of a script or algorithm to start me off I would be much obliged.

I am using PHP and can use MySql if needed.

Thanks in advance

nn :)

[londrum]

you could use google maps for this. i was reading a good book about it using php with google maps, and it turns out that you can custom-make your own squares, to display over the top of google's normal squares.

so all you'd have to do is cut up your map to match google's grid size, and then swap in your squares.

then you can make use of all of google's ready-built features like their map markers, zooming, scrolling etc.