Hi. I'm seeing in another forum if the best way to do this is with Javascript or Ajax but I'm wondering if there is an even easier simpler way. I'm trying to create a web service where users can check which countries they have visited from a list of 175 or so and a World map image would then instantly update with a filled color.

There are other similar services, but I'm envisioning mine to be both updating from checks in checkboxes and by clicking on the target country in the displayed image say with an imagemap. Additionally other solutions display all the visited countries in the same color. I would like different colors for different countries or at least for those countries that touch. Eventually I would like to include a feature that enables the choice of which colors to assign countries.

I found a Sourceforge project called pwmfccd. It's simply an open source image of the world and the coordinates on the PNG image for all the countries. You can use mogrify from ImageMagick and floodfill to fill the countries with color. I have done this successfully, locally with batch files.

My ISP has told me where mogrify is located, basically "/usr/bin/mogrify". I now have a horrendously complicated cgi script which if it worked is set to redraw the world map image with each checkbox. It's here. It also redraws the whole web page with each check. The web page starts here. Of course this is not at all efficient, and I think probably the real way to go is Ajax or Javascript, so that maybe just the image gets changed and redrawn, not the whole web page. Sorry I don't even know the difference between Javascript and Ajax and their relative merits at this point.

I suppose you could make just one part of the image update with each check or click on the image instead of even just the image redrawing, but I have never even heard of a hint at being able to do that for irregularly shaped image elements like countries. So I guess an Image map and sister checkbox entries tied to mogrify events redrawing the user's personal copy of the image with an image refresh would be the only way to go.

So how do you do this with something other than Javascript or Ajax or is that definitely the way to go and if so, how would you do it? Or can you after all cut up a web based image into irregular puzzle shaped piece which you can redraw individually at will.

Thanks in advance for reading and considering answering this post.