Hints About HTML Image Maps

With image maps you can have web pages with images, which have clickable areas on them, so called Hot spots with links to other documents. Image maps are easy to create and apply and in specific scenarios they have advantages to tables and web pages with frames. To create valid and working image maps, you have to consider various things.

• Store the image you want to use for the image map in the GIF, PNG, or BMP format. Make sure that the image is stored with 256 colours, otherwise the image will not work as image map and will be just displayed as any other image. (Please note that the BMP format should be avoided because of the file size or only used for small images.)
• The image must contain exactly 16 colours in the colour palette, even if the image was saved in a colour mode with more colours.
• Please note, that especially older browsers, e.g. all Netscape browser prior to Version 4.7, do not support the PNG format.
• Animated GIFs can also be used for image maps.

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