How do I highlight a country with the google maps api v3?

Question

I'm trying to achieve an effect similar to this:

Notice how France is brighter than the other countries. It has the 'focus'. I've been exploring the API and it looks like I'm supposed use kmlLayers to achieve this effect. Is this correct? If so, how do I leverage or even find kml to do this? How else could I do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

I found this can be done with polygons and 'holes'. Google has this pentagon example

The only down side is the polygon needs to be drawn by hand (maybe there's a database of country outlines?) I used this tool to assist with the manual drawing for now.

Answer 2

The information at these links will help you, I think:

1. KML of the World Countries as created by Valery Hronusov
2. KML of the World Capitals as created by Filipumme

Answer 3

this demo shows you how: https://google-developers.appspot.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/layer-kml

aight, got kml for france; working demo: http://dev.bowdenweb.com/maps/gmaps/layer-kml-02.html