[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.