I simply love my job. Because I can put together our relatively simple
intranet, the owner of my company decides I can put together a very complex
portion of our corporate (I believe) website.

The basic structure is in place, but he wants me to do something that is
strictly outside of my realm...so outside it that I don't even know where to
begin figuring out how to do it, hence I'm turning here.

Basically, he wants me to a have a username/password protected portion of the
site (which I don't know how to do, but I know I can find in a few of my books)
for our sales force. Within that area of the site, he wants to have a map of
our territory with a grid overlaid on top of it. Each square within the grid
should be 10 to 20 pixels, squared.

The map needs to be interactive in the following ways:
  • Ability to click on a square and "mark" it;
  • Once "marked" a dialog box needs to pop up, allowing the rep to enter sales
    information (type of service sold, total contract amount);
  • The "marking" becomes permanent, once the information is entered in the
    dialog box (though it can be clicked again and "unmarked" prior to info
    entering;
  • Reps cannot modify cells "marked" by any other user;
  • Once info is entered, another user (someone in admin) needs to be able to
    login and upload a small graphic, indicating the approval of the sale.


Without entering the protected section, the maps needs to be visible to ALL
visitors of our site, indicating our successful sales in our region for the
month, roughly approximated by geographic region.

Like I said, I'm way out of my knowledge base here, but my boss (the owner) is
secure in his "faith in my abilities" than I can figure it out. He's
exceptionally adamant that we don't a full-blown web-designer, and is fairly
against freelancing out through Rent-A-Coder or another such site.

I'm kind of stuck. I'm not looking for the code or anything, i just need
someone to point me in the right direction. How in the WORLD can I accomplish
this? He's seen it done on other sites, though he hasn't told me where, so he
knows it can be done (of course, he's believes ANYTHING can be done on the
web...He's pushing for some REALLY out there stuff in the future).

So...yeah...any help, hints, etc. would be appreciated. As of the beginning
of this project, he upgraded me to Macromedia Studio 8 and Adobe Creative Suite
2...

Thanks in advance!!

Spence