Looking for a simple Silverlight map component

Question

I am looking for a light-weight map component that displays a map of the US and allows users to click on a State and see information pertaining to that state. The data I wan

Answer 1

If you have access to Expression Studio (specifically Expression Design), creating maps as vector based images is quite easy. Poly-paths in Xaml are also relatively efficient to store and serve up compared to images.

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).

It will take a few hours to build all this (I know having done this for a world map country selector... took 4-5 hours solid for the one polygon styled below):

By having each state represented by a filled polygon-path highlighting (by changing the fill colour) is trivial on mouse-enter/mouse-leave events.

If you want stylistic map, remove the image, otherwise use transparency on the state polygons to show the map through the roll-overs.

Update:

And if you get yourself a graphic tablet and pen this sort of point-to-point work is about 5 times faster than with a mouse!