You should look into vector map tiles! Basically, you create a little JSON snippet for every image that the map server returns, and then overlay it in the client. There's support for JSON tiles in Polymaps (<http://polymaps.org/>).
Cool! I've not heard of Polymaps before, and will look into it. For the time being, I am using Google Maps.
Do you have any recommendations on how to create the tiles?
The most important thing, is that when a user clicks the markers in my map(whether or not they are real vector markers or rasters passing themselves off as markers), the marker's associated attribute values need to be available to be fed into a popup.
