I am looking to replicate the panning (not necessarily the zooming) effect of the Google Maps API, but without the images. Essentially, I want to position HTML elements in a large coordinate system and be able to navigate around them, Prezi style (though without the rotation).
Preferably, I'd like to preload the elements dynamically through jQuery/AJAX, but if I have to load everything initially, I will.
Any libraries out there that will allow me to do this? I could just code the thing myself, but I can't imagine noone else has thought of something similar before.
Can this be done with the Google Maps API, and if so, how? Implementing the GOverlay interface?
Open layers - http://www.openlayers.org/ is an open source implementation of the Google maps component, which might be more than you need, but is a good place to start.