Limiting the area of a mapfile that is displayed

[Gregor Mosheh]

>>     I've got a mapfile that displays the whole of a shapefile. Is there
>>    anything I can do to dynamically limit the area of the mapfile that
>>    mapserver actually displays? ie so that the user can click on a
>> point, and it then zooms in and centres on that point.

That's the entire mechanism of zooming. Check the documentation
(specifically, the ) for parameters for the mapserv binary, I believe
you're interested in "mapext"

http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/reference/templatereference/templatereference

Though, if you're interested in doing maps but don't want to monkey around
with nuts and bots like this, consider using a framework like Map-Fu,
OpenLayers, Community Mapbuilder, etc.