just a novice

[jules]

Hi,

I have mainly done Visul Basic, SQL programming and no web programming whatsoever. I friend advised me that the best web development tool now is PHP in combination with mySQL. I wonder what should be the best book to be used or procedure to be followed to advance faster. (any Canada , US published book?)

I also have a particular question to ask. My first project will include a map (have you used World Encarta or interactive maps).
One should be able to zoom in and out as well as move on the map to arreas that fall outside the frame. Basically the map will be many times bigger than what can be displayed on the screen so navigation will be needed. Could this be achieved with a ready made ActiveX control? Is it feasible to have a similar thing running on the net considering that the map itself will be many MB in size but probably less than 300Kb in the frame on the screen at one time.

Sorry if the contents of my message are not very suitable for this forum, I'm just too illiterate yet to know that :D

JLS

[stuntboy]

I am actually working on something that does some of that, you can go two routes to do it programically, one would be to use imagemagick and the other would be to use the GD library. I think it might actually be better to use imagemagick for this as it is faster and produces better quality. but it comes down to what you have available. I dont think an activeX control would be the best option here as it is not crossbrowser/platform. if you do it on the serverside with GD or imageMagick it will be independant :)

[jules]

Thanks Stuntboy, That should get me somewhere.

What tool is used for building the underlying database? Aside from the map I will have tables containing numeric, string and image data. Is it created similarly to an MS Access database where one can have a OLE type field containing images?

I am good with SQL and VB programming techniques which seem to be similar to the PHP / mySQL code I find in this forum.

Still I do not have the program (development environment) and am studying the ways to get it and learn in the process of building my site.

[stuntboy]

you can store images in a mySQL db though I have always found it better to store the links to the images in the db rather then the image itself.