Where to begin...
I was going to quote Zeldman's orange book, being the little Zeldmanite I am, but I'll go freestyle in the hopes that I get his concepts well enough by this point in time!
Image maps have (for the most part) fallen out of grace. I used to use them at one time (actually, right up until I cracked my ass down on all this standards hoopla and learned more techniques), but have since deviated away from tables all together for the most part and use div layouts. Anyhows, back in my table days I got pretty good with chopping them up just right and piecing them back together again. To make a short story shorter, I found that dicing up the image map into separate chunks using GIF compression made for a quicker load time than using one solid bar. It also carried the benefit of not having to rework an entire site when I wanted to add one new link to a feature on the navigational area.
If you're talking HTML filesize, going to chunked linked images will usually save a few bytes as well.
It's also a pain to generate new coordinates each time you need to change the map areas.
If you're a sucker for accessibility (like I am) image maps also do not permit navigation to screen readers.
The more I design, the more I see a different way of doing things - using text where images used to be, using CSS for "this" instead of Javascript, etc... I also see where image maps can bog down a developer in terms of redesign and adding new features.
I work for a .edu site as well. http://www.jmu.edu, or more specifically, http://medialab.jmu.edu is my department. In the past year and a half I've been working there, I've done work to quite a few different sites altering them to be more updateable in nature, and am currently doing a site from the ground up in XHTML1.0 + CSS, in a tableless layout environment. The graphics for the layout are 8-bit PNG with a JPG graphical header and total about 12kb in size. The HTML markup without content is roughly 4kb in size. Had I used tables, that would probably easily be around 8 or 9. The CSS file is a one-time download of 9kb, and it runs site-wide. A typical page with content typically loads in around 2.5-3 seconds on 56k modems.
So, personally, I think that realm is where everyone should want to eventually wind up at some point in their work. I've gone bit by bit towards a minimalist CSS-driven style of designing web sites, and I'm sort of happy that I wound up there. In the future, redesigning for a fresh look will take about 2 hours, and there's ample room to continue adding content and links in the meantime without a redesign.
I'm actually redesigning a site that uses a huge image map tomorrow (http://orgs.jmu.edu/signlanguageclub) and bringing it to valid code and no tables.
It's a pretty basic site, so expect some results tomorrow. I'll have both versions posted in their entirety + source around 10pm eastern standard time.
I can talk the talk. Tomorrow I walk the walk. ;)
Summary: nixing image maps will save you trouble, time, and redesign strife somewhere along the road, ane probably lead to smaller load times as well.
--Ryan http://www.theward.net
PS - things to keep in mind: I code by hand, despise complex table layouts, and live life and web design by the "Keep It Simple Stupid" motto.
Veine K Vikberg wrote:
Ryan;
Lets hear your reasoning for not using them, and I am willing to change if your reasoning is good enough ;o)
However, this client is these days *very* concerned with download time, and as it stands the page is downloading at approximately 8 seconds on a 56K modem under perfect conditions (not that it ever is but...) and that is what he wanted +2 seconds (he said under 10) with the graphics broken up, I am close to that ten second mark, but if there is something I do not know about image maps, please enlighten me. (I did the one located at http://www.mainemaritime.edu 3 years ago when wait was the norm so it was no concern)
Regards ~Veine
At 07:25 PM 2/2/2004 -0500, you wrote:
This really has nothing to do with your email, but I'd recommend staying away from image maps :) i always peek under the hood at the sites that get sent out on the list. As it's not released yet, you'd still have time to change your deployment method. If you don't agree, that's cool. I'm just biased against them :)
--Ryan http://www.theward.net
Veine K Vikberg wrote:
Hello;
http://www.mainemaritime.edu/redesign
On Mac (OS8.5/IE5.1) looks good, except for around the search box, where there is some weird things going on.
If anyone has any help/advice/links to help I would greatly appreciate them, especially the first problem as the client will look on his page through NS 7.1/XP Pro
TIA & Regards ~Veine
Veine K Vikberg http://www.vikberg.net Professional Web Guru
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