Dynamic Maps Wanted

[CPL]

I am currently having my website search facility redesigned and am looking for a knock-out, interactive map of the UK and London. I am willing to pay for one to be built if I can't find what I'm looking for. The developers and designers I have hired are not too familiar with UK regions, Counties etc.

For the UK, I think I want the map to begin as Regions > Counties with the search results then listed. At least until the database is populated further.

However, London database is populated so searches can be narrowed further, to district, e.g. Kingston, West End, City etc. possibly even post code N1, SW18, W1 etc.

Some examples that I think are pretty good are listed below. I realise the need not to infringe copyright and am looking at keeping the IP Rights to the new map, although that isn't a deal killer:-

http://www.findaproperty.com/index.a...=04&salerent=0

The Training Wall

Advance Pub Search

I have also found some good maps to purchase:-

UK Regions & Counties with an Interactive Flash Map for custom maps

United Kingdom and Ireland Locator online map. Free download sample and demo version maps.

Interactive Flash maps | United Kingdom map sample

Would this be the best way to go? Are there any legal issues I should consider?

Any help would be much appreciated. many thanks

CPL

[chandrika]

Ordnance Survery produce free maps of UK counties and regions. They say you can not use them for financial gain, but can use them for presentations and graphics applications, so I think that covers what you would be doing. I read it to mean you cant sell the maps basically.
Free downloadable GB maps from Ordnance Survey

If you have a map like that, then it is quite easy to do the effects like you have shown, using a simple html image map with rollover effects. You do not need to use Flash and Flash always has the problem of not being very indexable by search engines.

Image map - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Your question took me right back, as the first website I ever built back before 2000 was for my dads pub letting business and it had an image map just like the one in the site you linked to. I just checked it out in archive.org, brought back some memories.

[jScott_Harris]

Phoogle(Google Maps PHP Class: Phoogle Maps | systemsevendesigns Freelance Web Development Cornelius, NC) and Phoogle plugins...It's all free, it uses google maps and you can customize the look and feel depending on the variation you use. You can have it return a latitude and longitude as well. With a little scripting you have show the results based on a radius from the center of the map and also show all the locations on the map. No need to make a bunch of images and so forth, let google do the work for you. I did something similar on ChowNowOnline.com | Your Meal, Your Choice, Your Way. There you can put in your address and it will give you a list of the restaurants within a pre-defined radius. It's a new site, so right now it only caters the to Greenville,SC area. You even see that the links on the google maps link to chownow pages and nowhere else.

[CPL]

Guys

Thank you both for your replies. I searched high and low for the right kind of map for my website and seriously considered a company called Fusion Charts FusionCharts v3 - Animated Flash Charts and Graphs who seemed to have the best maps for what I wanted, however, the company developing my new website Welcome to Indus Net Technologies have given me an example of what they can do which looks good so I'm sticking with them for now. I will post a link when it's completed so others can consider its usefulness.

Thank you both again for your information.

CPL

[mtheory]

I use Yahoo's Flash api for maps. Very versitile.

example: My Branford - Branford, Connecticut