Which javascript library should I use?

I'll try to present my problem clearly, but I'm bit of a novice in programming so try to bear with me.

I'm currently working on a piece of map which I eventually need to get up and running on a website. I'm working on the file in Adobe Illustrator and I have several layers to the map. What I need is an intuitive, graphically pleasing, application where the user can pan and zoom in the map á la Google Maps. Another key feature I need is the ability to hide/show layers and being able to click on some of the highlighted points on one of these layers to bring up additional information. I've played around creating layer toggles straight in to an SVG but I really need them on a separate sidebar so they stay static when the 开发者_运维百科user is eventually panning and zooming in to the map.

So far in to my research I've come to the conclusion that OpenLayers and Google Maps API are not for me as the map is relatively small and I don't need to tie it in to a larger map. Instead I think it's best to treat it as a biggish floating vector image. I've also played around creating layer toggles straight in to an SVG but I really need them on a separate sidebar so they stay static when the user is eventually panning and zooming in to the map. I tried working with Raphaël and while I especially like the graphical side of it, I'm struggling to work my Illustrator file in to it and the zooming/panning script I found isn't really working for me either.

So which way should I go? I apologize for my bad knowledge of things, but I'm quite lost here and would appreciate a nudge towards the right direction.

Thank you! -Ilkka

There is jVectorMap for embedding vector maps into HTML pages, it has map zooming and moving functionality. I can help to convert your maps to the appropriate format (you need to extract svg pathes from source file).

Raphael JS is a very good Javascript vector-handling library, you may find it useful. By the way, this question has a link to a tutorial on it.

I think Dojo in conjunction with jQuery can give you nice results when working with HTML and SVG. Dojo is more kind of graphics JS library which works well with SVG and jQuery will allow you to work with HTML faster than most other JS frameworks

You should try Raphael by all means, perhabs in conjunction with jquery. Using dojo sounds a bit like an overkill.