I need to create an interactive world map on the front page of a site, the view portal will be about 650x200 pixels. The interactivity would include the following, mouse-over a country would highlight (the countries are will literally be filled with "red" for example) that country and display the countries' name (preferably text in a div), I will also be linking the highlighting event with a that will highlight a country when selected.

I am having a difficult time finding a suitable solution, I refuse to use or learn a proprietry technology such as flash so it is not an option. I created a simple mockup using openlayers and a custom map image but the countries' markers load too slowly in IE6.

Also svg seems too large, as I tried to use RaphaelJS, but abondoned it when I realised the world map data is 1.2mb which is totally un acceptable for the front page of a site..

I am really at a loss on how I am going to do this, my last resort is to manually create 250+ (however many countries there are) pngs and apply mouseover events to hotspots in the image... but this is probably going to be a dead end too.. desperately seeking a solution, any helpful comments will be appreciated!