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Image maps seem to have gone out of fashion, is there a performance reason for this , other than you have to download one giant image?

hogsolo
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  • "is there a performance reason for this" Are you sure you couldn't think of any other reason for which they could have been phased out? Or are you just indignant that they were phased out at all? FWIW, image maps still exist in HTML5. – BoltClock Mar 02 '12 at 18:51
  • if that image is giant depends strongly on your image size and quality. By the way it is cheaper to download one bigger picture (css sprite) than tons of small pictures. image maps are a bit out of fashion, because it is a lot of math when you want to make something really good and also from the seo point of view they are a disaster. – Sven Bieder Mar 02 '12 at 18:52
  • i thought it has more to do with search not detecting image maps. but they come in handy sometimes when you need vector hit areas – t q Mar 02 '12 at 18:53
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    "search not detecting image maps" is the same as "from the seo point of view they are a disaster" – Sven Bieder Mar 02 '12 at 18:55
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    @tq: The areas specified inside the map can still have an `alt` attribute like a normal image, which would represent each link as its text to a crawler (such as a search engine). – animuson Mar 02 '12 at 18:58

1 Answers1

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I think one of the main reasons they've gone out of fashion is the oncoming of all the CSS3 features which don't really work with image maps. An image map uses a single image with a bunch of geometric shaped "links" on top of it. You can't really apply hover effects all that well, etc, which in today's web age makes it hard to even tell you're hovering over a link.

As for performance, no not really. In fact, an image map is most likely faster than loading a bunch of separate images. It uses only one HTTP request and combines all the data, which can make it slightly smaller in size. But, it also depends on the image and what you're doing with it.

So, it really depends on what your ultimate goal is with the images.

animuson
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