You've probably all used a "dynamic" map where you could zoom and pan a map made up of tiles. The most popular dynamic maps are from Google and MapQuest but hundreds of web sites are now using this technology. The challenge with creating dynamic maps is that you have to have a programming language and HTML is just a document formatting language.
Web browsers are very limited in what they support. You either have to do development in HTML, JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or create a Plug-in that the user installs.
Plug-ins are much harder to support across all the browser versions and they have access to your entire computer's resources so they have fallen out of favor except for the PDF version. Because of this and HTML 5, JavaScript is becoming the most common way to provide dynamic maps and a huge variety of other dynamic features in web sites.
Java Applets are another approach and Java has been very secure in the past except for a couple of notable exceptions. Java Applets and Plug-ins are going away because of the capabilities of HTML 5.
JavaScript can access a variety of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that put dynamic maps into web pages. You do need to do some programming to use these but it's not a lot of programming and there are great resources available on the web to learn JavaScript.
The dynamic map below was created using a small amount of JavaScript and a "div" tag. The JavaScript calls the Leaflet library to display tiles from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) web service.
When you start having a lot of data, you may want to "host" your data with a data portal such as ArcOnline.
ArcOnline is a natural place for Esri users to host their own data. However, be aware that if you have a lot of traffic to your site or store a lot of data on their servers, you can be charged, sometimes without being warned.
MapBox is a company that is develiping some of the most exciting and effective online maps. You can host your data on their site and make your own online amps thourgh thier web site. Again, be aware that they are a company and will charge you if you have a lot of traffic and/or data.
CanvasMap is a library that was created and is maintained by Dr. Jim Graham here at HSU. He teaches how to use CanvasMap to create interactive websites in GSP 418.
W3Schools - Also has great tutorials on JavaScript
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