How to create an interactive Map using Images

Question

I have a couple of images that I would like to create an interactive map of in Silverlight and WPF. The pictures are of States and counties. I tried doing some search on how this is done but have not been able to find a good example on how to go about accomplishing this. So I would appreciate your help. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I was involved in creating a Xaml World map from scratch (below) and that alone took nearly a day for a stylised polygon version (no fine detail)....

I have since purchased a Wacom Bamboo tablet & stylus and found that to be about 5 times faster to work with compared with a mouse.

Quoting myself: "You import a map as a background image and use the pen tool to dot-to-dot trace around the country. Combine all those path segments into a single path. Then create a separate poly-path for each state (close them to allow for a fill)."

Once you create them you can name the individual country polygons and connect up mouse logic to make them all glow on mouse over or change colour on press etc.

Basically all the other stuff on that screen are user controls and custom controls. Work out the behaviour you want and create controls to suit your own needs.

In your instance you can use less accurate polygons as they will only be for hit-testing and highlighting and you will want to retain the actual map images under the polygons.