Navigation Maps for Website

I know very little about GIS mapping, so I'd appreciate any wisdom any
of you might be willing to impart.

I need some maps to aid in navigation for a website. The first would be
a map of the United States with a link going to each state page. Each
state page would show the counties and have links to the county pages.
Am I on the right track with this GIS stuff, or do I need to buy a $200
atlas CD from mapresources.com? I've also heard of VMAP; is that what I
need?

Preferrably I'd export the pictures in a vector format for tweaking
before making them bitmpas, but if a program could export good looking
rasters, that would be fine too.

Thank you for your time,
Trevor

trevordixon@gmail.com wrote in news:1150294680.946780.193870
@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com:


You don't necessarily need a GIS -- static images with image maps would do
fine, but setting them up for every state would be quite tedious. For an
example US map with state links, see
http://www.holoscenes.com/special/geocac/extreme_index.html

A mapping program might help automate the creation of the image maps for
the state counties.

--
Jim Irwin
http://www.holoscenes.com

Thanks for your reply Jim. So does anybody know of a good program that
will export the maps I need (preferably in EPS format)? How much would
such a program set me back? Where do I get GIS data to create the maps?

Trevor

jimirwin wrote:

trevordixon@gmail.com wrote in


One source of data the the Bureau of Transportation Statistics National
Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). http://www.bts.gov It contains
state outline and county outline files, and it is free (the BTS will send
you a CDROM for free - http://www.bts.gov ). The files are in SHP format,
which is a vector format, so all you need is a program to convert SHP files
to some other vector format you are comfortable with. There are hundreds
of open source programs that convert or render SHP files into various other
formats.

--
Jim Irwin
http://www.holoscenes.com

And what about using Google Maps ? You can "mashup" those with your pages.
All you need is just a little experience in javascript.
You´ve got info, examples and API Class Reference here
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/

Lyapunov