pan,zoom,rotation

Does the camera stay at the same position and just follow the lookat point? Then gluLookAt should suffice. Otherwise you'd have to update the camera position first - based on the change of the lookat point, e.g. calculate cam.pos - lookat, apply the rotation to that vector and add the result to the new look at in order to update the position.

However, you should definitly have a look into vector and matrix math. There are plenty of tutorials on the net and a lot of good primers out there. Even if glTranslate et.al. make transformations quite easy you need a good understanding of matrix and vector math in order to understand how to use them properly (or skip them and use your own calculations).

Nothing in 3D graphics is easy or free. You will need to invest some time/effort into creating a camera class of sorts. I have different camera classes to allow for different things - eg. one for tracking a player - one for following a spline curve and a basic one for UI work etc... I would suggest defining a camera class interface and then have all camera class instances adhere to this interface. That way later on, regardless of the specific camera class used to interact with the world - you can always call on a standard virtual interface method.

okay i got the translation and rotation part. But how ahould i approach the zoom?

Generally zoom is achieved by changing the field of view, i.e. zoom in -> decrease FoV

And remember that a zoom is different than a dolly (moving the camera forward/backward).

ohh.. but i am trying to achieve my zoom by moving in/out cause am told that it is better to do it like that. thou not sure y.

// Get the resulting matrix from OpenGL it will have our
// direction vector in the 3rd row.
gl.glGetFloatv(GL.GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, Matrix, 0);

// Get the direction vector from the matrix. Element 10 must
// be inverted!
m_DirectionVector.x = Matrix[8];
m_DirectionVector.y = Matrix[9];
m_DirectionVector.z = -Matrix[10];

//limit zoom to the lower ground
float yPos;
if(-m_Position.y+m_Zoom>=-2.2)
yPos=-m_Position.y+m_Zoom;
else
yPos=-2.2f;
glu.gluLookAt(m_Position.x+m_Zoom,yPos,m_Position.y+m_Zoom,target.x,target.z,target.y-100,0,1,0);

where target is my mousePosition.

It is moving towards the mouseposition but in a straight manner. How should i form my direction vector? and how should i place it?