What technology to use for an Interactive web map?

Question

I need to build a custom interactive web map of my country with all it's regions (Peru). Which tool or technology would be the best way to go?

The idea is to have a map that shows the population of each region with a color scale: the more people the region has, the darker it's painted. Also I need to display some information as text and pictures when I click each region as the maps zooms in.

I've seen around and there are lots of "pre-developed" tools that can be customized but I need to build my own. Flash is already discarded. I was thinking of Java applet but is just an idea. Thank you for your answers.

Answer 1

Here is the VectorWorkz GeoChart jQuery plugin, which are readily compatible with all major web-development platforms. It allows you to create heat map based on some data, you can bound your data to the regions so that region color will change when bounded data changes, it also allows you to add label text and markers into the map, adding image markers also possible.

Answer 2

I would not use a java applet, as seo searching of the applet will not happen. Who cares if it's a great applet if no one knows about it?

I would check out D3 . I am trying to use it myself as we speak, but I have the feeling you can map your data to it quite well.