This document is a step-by-step tutorial for designing and serving graphical maps of information resources with either the external imagemap CGI script or with the built in imagemap support in NCSA HTTPd 1.5. Through such a map, users can be provided with a graphical overview of any set of information resources; by clicking on different parts of the overview image, they can transparently access any of the information resources (possibly spread out all across the Internet).
- Requirements
- Compiling the Imagemap Script
- Your First Imagemap
- Internal Imagemap Support
- A Complete Example
- Real-World Examples
Your First Imagemap
In this section we walk through the steps needed to get an initial image map up and running.There are a number of image creation and editing programs that will work nicely -- the one I use is called xpaint (I don't know where its home page is anymore). You can get it here. It's for UNIX systems running an X interface.
Second: create an imagemap map file.
This file maps regions to URLs for the given image. For a list of tools that may help you create a map file, see Yahoo's Imagemap Directory. For instance, there is a program called mapedit that you could use.
A common scheme for an imagemap is a collection of points, polygons, rectangles and circles, each containing a short text description of some piece of information or some information server; interconnections are conveyed through lines or arcs. Try to keep the individual items in the map spaced out far enough so a user will clearly know what he or she is clicking on.
