RE: What's involved with image mapping?

>I've avoided image maps as being fancy 'flash' rather than the best way to
>navigate sites, but this request seems to be the type of intuitive useage
>that image maps are best suited for....<grin>

Images maps are not that bad.
Overdoing them? Now, that's bad!
Misusing them? That's bad to!

When frames appeared for the first time, there was this rush to the new
technique and by the time it takes to blink one eye, everybody started to
use frames on their sites. Most of them pointless and without new added
value whatsoever to the contents of the pages. (I know! I did it). So a more
mature months later frames were the devil.
With image maps, when CSIMs* went to the street, again the rush and again
misuse, overuse and general lack of knowledge of it's real applications and
advantages/disadvantages. And again a few mature months later CSIMs went
from life saviors to a pointless toy for developer wannabes.

This is the way of new technologies on the web development arena. But you
should not get discouraged by that. Some of the best sites out there use
frames or CSIMs or even both. The catch it's that they use it wisely and
plainly show that frames and CSIMs can make a difference in web site
development when judiciously applied.

* CSIM (Client Side Image Map), the norm now.

>
>I'm asking for advice from the resident pro's as to the procedures involved
>and any problems and pitfalls that can be avoided, and whether specific
>programs to generate the maps are either required, recommended, or not
>necessary, along with recommendations for specific software.

Well, the biggest pitfall you'll find has to do with the ALT attribute of
the parts of the image.
The <AREA> tag accepts the ALT attribute (HTML4 DTD calls it REQUIRED!), but
no single browser deals with it the correct way.
The best approach here, it's to give an ALT to the <IMG> tag used to
identify the image map saying users that don't have images turned on to use
the text links you placed on the bottom of the page. Something like this "If
you can't see this image, either turn images on, or use the text links
bellow".
Either way, *always* specify the ALT attribute for individual <AREA> tags.
Not only it's required by HTML4 standards (and NN it's slightly better on
it's rendering), but if for any good fortune, browsers start to comply, you
surely don't want to have to change all your CSIMs just because "a few
months ago this thing didn't work".

As for the tools of the trade... It's better to use some kind of tool to
create CSIMs. The process of investigating the correct coordinates and
coding them it's very time consuming. There are some good tools out there.
Here are some:

- CoffeCup ImageMaper++ (http://www.coffeecup.com)
- LiveImage (My favorite) (http://www.liveimage.com)
A search at Tucows or Winfiles will prove most useful. But LiveImage seems
to me the best tool on the market.
Also, the above tools, not only enable you to design your image maps very
rapidly, but also create the code for you.

Image Slicing is another technique that proves most useful on almost any
situation. My only defense of CSIMs comes in those events when you want your
link to have an area other than rectangular. Since you are talking about a
US map as your image map, depending on the shape of the areas you are trying
to create, I can safely bet that CSIMs are the answer to your question.

One last piece of advice. Don't forget to optimize the disk size of the
image map. Most people forget that and users have to wait an eternity for
the all image to download. Even in an Intranet environment (as it's your
case) this comes as a good professional practice and a good management of
resources.

Regards,
Mario Figueiredo

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