[michaelt]

Before Google Maps came out, online maps all looked like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20060428160705/http://www.multim... and this: https://web.archive.org/web/20050528023529/http://maps.yahoo...

View the map a single tile at a time, no dragging the map, no moving by less than a tile, no zooming with the mousewheel, every move and zoom a full pageload.

(You'll also notice the older maps are much higher contrast than Google Maps - the older maps being modelled on printed paper maps)

[tyingq]

>every move and zoom a full pageload

That seems expected, since XMLHttpRequest wasn't really broadly standard until 2003/4 or so. Mapquest and other incumbents didn't move fast enough to use it.

[michaelt]

But you could use Javascript to replace one image with another - or to move elements around the page in response to the mouse.

(Back in those days common usage was limited to trivial things like making buttons change colour on mouseover)

[tyingq]

I don't know that would be enough to deal with panning and zooming a tile based map, at least not without some severe hackery.

[jameshart]

Such maps presumably still had the issue of ocean tiles.