#2 Interactive Map design
The boss wants to use an interactive map to show how
a certain county is leaning. When clicking on the
county, you can see the election data that is relevant to
that county. Researching this a little (very little), I came
up with three ideas to do this.
1. A command button or picture box that takes the
shape of an image, with each button having its own
county, then combining all the images to make the map.
Drawbacks: could be hard to get them to line up
correctly. Lots of extra coding. May have problems with
the click event.
2. A html map of the state with the coordinates mapped
out for each county.
Drawbacks: limited functionality with HTML, i.e., it
would be hard to send back and present data based off
the user's click. Of course, I have never done something
like that so I may be way off.
3. A flash program with a map and data for each county,
just like they do it on CNN.
Drawbacks: We need someone who actually knows
flash and who knows how to use a database connection
with flash. Usher may not have Flash installed on their
machine.
4. A java applet?
Drawbacks: User may not have Java installed on their
machine.
If you have any experience with this, please provide any
input you can.
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Hey guys,
Give me a few days and I'll see what I can come up with.
On Suggestion #1 above, we could do this in VB.net as long
as the counties are buttons. We could then have a lot of
flexibility. We could send them messages based on time that
would change their colors and a user could then click the
"county" to get a pop-up box with relevant information as to
current race standings.
I am also looking into Flash. Though some users might not
have it, we could include the distributable with out product
or let them download it.
Dynamic HTML is another option, but I prefer the first two.
I also prefer to stay away from java for now.
Marty