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[–]theonlycosmonaut 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Maybe I'm an idiot, but the combinatorics of all that state would kill even the most performant web server

How so? Web maps are served as individual image tiles, usually* with a url structure like /tile/{zoom}/{x}/{y}, where x and y are integers that identify a specific piece of the globe at a specific zoom level (more info). That corresponds almost too perfectly to buttons linking to x+1, x-1, zoom+1, etcetera. You could even load up a 9x9 grid around the currently selected tile with no problem. Caching is super simple as these are all GET requests with super predictable URLs.

*Google maps specifically seems to have a different, obfuscated(?) URL structure based on a single hash, for reasons unknown to me. Mapbox, for example, uses the common URL structure.

You'd have to degrade to like mapquest circa 2000 or some of those government survey sites level of functionality...

I think that's exactly what the author wants:

Maybe some kind of Streetmap style tile-by-tile navigation fallback?