Web: Inside Google Maps

First off, if you haven't checked out the beta of Google Maps yet, you really should. It's an amazing use of web technologies and provides the most satisfying map-browsing experience I've ever had on the web. It's still got a few rough edges, but even with them unresolved, I expect to be using Google Maps instead of any of the other internet map services. It's just that cool.

But how does it work? If I had implemented such a thing (and I've implemented some similar stuff) I'd have undoubtedly done it in Flash. I would've thought that the obvious other candidates would have been shockwave or Java. All of these provide a robust client-side application development platform on which to do this sort of thing. To be honest, I would've suspected that any technologies built into web-browsers, such as CSS, DHTML, and Javascript, would have been either inadequate to the task, too buggy, or too slow. Not so, it proves, and here (via as simple as possible, but no simpler) is a fairly high-level explanation of how it was done.