[HN Gopher] Revisiting Image Maps
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Revisiting Image Maps
        
       Author : thm
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2025-05-09 13:44 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (css-tricks.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (css-tricks.com)
        
       | ag8 wrote:
       | wow, I used to make so many games with image maps back when I
       | first learned HTML. One still survives:
       | https://andrew.fi/beowulf/game/
        
         | bni wrote:
         | Thanks for posting this.
         | 
         | I met the dragon and died I think.
        
           | chrismorgan wrote:
           | There is no way to defeat the evil dragon Hrathogwar. View
           | the page sources to more easily traverse the URL graph, and
           | confirm there is no escape. You can wander back and forth
           | forever, but if you try to progress, to make Hrothgar happy,
           | you get stuck.
        
         | mikeocool wrote:
         | I feel like you were ahead of the trend with the visual style
         | in this game.
        
       | M95D wrote:
       | This is all because of web standards playing catch-up with
       | implementations instead of the other way around.
        
       | notarealllama wrote:
       | TFA takes us on this journey and then at the end, "Image maps
       | ended up not working for us" without telling us what they did. My
       | money is on JavaScript for that "expressive" aspect of the hover.
        
         | chrismorgan wrote:
         | The last third describes exactly what he did.
        
       | chrismorgan wrote:
       | > _My first thought was to embed anchors into the external map
       | SVG: [...]_
       | 
       | > _This approach is problematic. Those anchors are only active
       | when SVG is inline and don't work with an <img> element._
       | 
       | No, this approach is fine: you just need to use <object data=...>
       | instead of <img src=...>. <object> is the correct choice for
       | embedding interactive SVG.
       | 
       | But you probably do want the SVG to be inline anyway, because it
       | will load faster and is in this case actively the content of the
       | page; which is the technical decision he ended up at, though
       | perhaps for partly the wrong reason.
       | 
       | (There's also <iframe>.)
        
         | King-Aaron wrote:
         | > There's also <iframe>
         | 
         | Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time...a long time.
        
           | zyberzero wrote:
           | Really? I'd say image maps was the name I haven't heard in a
           | long time... As in I read a couple of paragraphs before it
           | dawned on me that it was _that_ type of image maps that post
           | was about - I first thought it was something regarding
           | rasterized maps (like OpenStreetMap or something)
        
           | ogou wrote:
           | If you're looking at any web page with ads or tracking, it
           | has many iframe elements. The javascript that loads them
           | usually creates an iframe and the ad appears there. A typical
           | newspaper site could have 5-50 iframes on each page.
        
           | patates wrote:
           | Perhaps you confused it with the frameset and frame?
           | 
           | frameset: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
           | US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
           | 
           | frame: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
           | US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
           | 
           | iframe: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
           | US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
        
       | seabass wrote:
       | > Anchors positioned absolutely over my map wouldn't solve the
       | pixel-based positioning problem or give me the irregular-shaped
       | clickable areas I wanted. Anchors within an external SVG wouldn't
       | work either.
       | 
       | If you're trying something like this and irregular-shaped
       | clickable areas are not a concern (like if only the numbered
       | circles from the article's example would be clickable) then
       | absolutely positioned anchors can be made to work. The trick is
       | to use js to apply a css scale transformation to a relatively
       | positioned parent container whenever the underlying image changes
       | size.
        
         | abanana wrote:
         | My thought when reading that in the article was (in cases
         | where, as you said, irregular-shaped clickable areas are not a
         | concern): why do we need pixel-based positioning? What's wrong
         | with percentage-based positioning and sizing? I did exactly
         | that a couple of years ago, and it worked as expected.
        
       | danhite wrote:
       | for those of you using something like their technique of opacity
       | animating a clip-path region from one look to another upon ~click
       | ...
       | 
       | if you wish to be visually kind to safari users you can eliminate
       | the default gray selection indication flash animation safari does
       | upon a tap activation with just a tiny bit of webkit-only css ,
       | for example ...
       | 
       | #links { -webkit-tap-highlight-color : transparent ; }
       | 
       | added to the css of their codepen fixes it (without causing any
       | issues for other/std browsers afaik)
        
       | deanc wrote:
       | I've spent five minutes now, to no avail, trying to find a link
       | to this website.
        
         | bigwheeler wrote:
         | I think I read somewhere else that it is not publicly launched
         | yet, but should be very soon.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-05-13 23:02 UTC)