Image Maps

[Straitsfan]

I'm a little confused. I'm going through the HTML tutorial and can't quite figure out the difference between an image map and creating a map out of an image, unless it's the same. When I placed my cursor over the example for creating a map out of an image, there were no coordiantes displayed in the status bar (Maybe I didn't display the status bar at all -- can someone help me with that as well?) I have an image in a test page I'm making, and I set the parameters and link, but I did that under the 'image map' section and not the 'creating an image out of a map' section. Please let me know if you need more information.

[jeffman]

Sorry, none of us knows the tutorials well enough to recognize one by it's title. (The authors are not on the board.) I've toyed with the planets map (that the one?) and for all I know there are 12 different links to get you there. Conceptually, I can't see how there would be any difference. For an image map to work, you need:1. an image with a usemap attribute2. a <map>3. <area> tags inside the map tags.There are no alternate ways of making that work, so you may just be covering the same ground again, maybe from a different link, or maybe on a different version of the same page. The site has recently been updated; maybe that has something to do with it.

[Straitsfan]

I was using the w3schools tutorials; if you first click on HTML on the home page, you'll see on the right a list of all the HTML topics covered. Click on the HTML Image link and you'll go to the image page. about halfway down or so, there are other links to click (under 'more examples,' showing examples of various things you can do with an image. Two of the links are 'create an image map' and 'turn an image into an image map.' The second one, turning an image into an image map, has different attributes in it. That's what I was confused about.

[jeffman]

Okay. I'm having flashbacks. If I remember correctly, when the web was new, there were no client-side image maps. Mapping depended on your having access to a server and some sort of CGI set-up. This was okay, because in the early Mosaic days, most web authors had complete access to their own servers, which were right down the hall or in the next building.The ismap attribute turns your image into a coordinate-making machine. When you click on the image, the mouse coordinates get sent to your server, where a script (presumably) interprets the coordinates and sends back the appropriate page (or whatever).I suppose there are pages that still use this functionality.When client-side mapping came along a year or so later, most people stopped using it. By then, ordinary people were leasing server space, or using free servers like Geocities, but the host companies were not yet giving people CGI access. (By ordinary, I mean people who didn't have local access to a Unix box connected to the Internet.)I wouldn't worry about the status bar. If your status bar normally displays the destination of links as you roll over them, then you should see the link followed by a ? followed by x,y coordinates. If it doesn't, you won't see anything special. Again, long ago, everybody's status bar looked the same. Today, browsers let you configure them, make them disappear, etc.The short of this is: using an image as a map in this way is an old fashioned technique that still exists. And if you're cramming for a test, maybe you should know about it. But virtually no one needs to remember it, because almost no one needs to use it.