title: Creating custom map for website displaying fire district - basic questions
body: <p>I'm slowly getting the hang of the Google Javascript API. I have a municipal client with five locations that service an entire area. They would like to be able to display the entire area they service (I assume I'd use a polyline here) and then be able to have each area serviced by each location highlight when hovered over. On top of that, they want an end-user to be able to discreetly and anonymously enter their physical address (or on a phone have a button that says 'Where I am') that would return a result letting the end-user know which location services them (and highlight or flash the boundaries of that area.</p>
  
  <p>Here are my questions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Again, I am assuming I'd use a polyline for the entire area of service?</li>
  <li>What sort of layer (or would I use a polygon?) would I use for each location's area?</li>
  <li>Assuming the user's location was a marker (hidden on the other side of the world to begin with), is there a special method I use to fire to make that marker move and appear?</li>
  <li>What method would I use to fire the flashing of the boundary associated with it?</li>
  <li>More to the point, how to I grab coordinates from their address and then compare it against the layer / polygon to see if it 'touches' it, or is there a better method?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I don't necessarily <em>need</em> code. I can write code. I'm just trying to get the idea straight in my head on how to do all of this.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for the advice!</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I am filling these polygons / layers with data I stored in a mySQL database and will push it out with PHP</li>
  <li>I have the coordinates for the locations and I'm rounding up the coordinates for the boundaries now</li>
  <li>I have not published any of this code. It's on a local Ubuntu server for testing</li>
  </ul>