WHAT IS AN IMAGE MAP?

WHAT IS AN IMAGE MAP?      

Earlier in this lesson, you learned how to create an image that doubles as a link simply by including the <img> tag inside a link tag (<a>). In this way, the entire image becomes a link.

In an image map different parts of the image are different links. You can specify that car – train areas of amp link to various pages, as in figure.7.17. Or you can crate visual metaphors for the information You’re presenting, such as s set of books on a shelf or aa photograph with a link from each person in the picture to a page with his or her biography on it.

FIGURE 7.17 IMAGEMAPS: DIFFERENT PALCES, DIFFRENT LINKS.

There are two kinds of image maps: server- side image maps and client – side image maps. Server-side image maps were used in the earlier days of the web, but they posed some problems for web authors, and have fallen into disuse. In this lesson, client – side imagoes, which are handled completely by the browser, are used almost exclusively and offer man you advantages over older, server- side image maps.

Server- side image maps work in the same ways as server – side image maps, except to program runs on the server. All the processing of coordinates and pointers to different local – tins occurs in the browser.

Every browser released since Netscape 2.0 supports client – side image maps, so there’s not really any reason to bother with server – side image maps any more. In theism lesson, I’m only going to talk about client –side image maps. To learn about server side image maps, check out the Apache mod _imp documentation at http://httpd. Apache. Org/docs/did/mod_imap. Html.