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! ICK ;)
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.
In this case there is no rework until the redesign, client wants to keep it the same way for 2-4 years and then change again, the long term goal is to keep the site fresh. However I will today take the time to redo the bar and cut it up to see what can be done there in the question about loadtime
If you're talking HTML filesize, going to chunked linked images will usually save a few bytes as well.
Can not be much and probably something that I will not even look at
It's also a pain to generate new coordinates each time you need to change the map areas.
True, but a little free-ware program I have those image maps take less then a min a piece to rewrite.
If you're a sucker for accessibility (like I am) image maps also do not permit navigation to screen readers.
I thought they did, IF you provide a description with the link, no?
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.
Will try it today.
--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.
Is there anything BUT coding all by hand? ;o) I don't know about it in any case :op
Regards
~VeineVeine K Vikberg http://www.vikberg.net Professional Web Guru
