Re: Dropping <input usemap="">

Robert Burns wrote:
>> If you wanted it to transmit the click through the area onto the image 
>> button behind it, then that's no good for accessibility (users without 
>> a pointing device couldn't click through the area, and activating an 
>> <area> with the keyboard wouldn't be able to do anything sensible 
>> since the UA would have no idea what was sensible in that case), and 
>> it would be incompatible with the current implementations in 
>> Firefox/Opera.
> 
> Again, those are implementation problems that could be handled in a much 
> richer fashion. For keyboard access, users could tab through the |area| 
> elements. As each |area| got focus it would get the focus outline 
> (though the outline would match the shape of the |area| whatever that 
> may be). For aural users, they already can navigate the |area| elements 
> and select the appropriate one based on the @alt text.

<map name="m">
   <area shape="circle" coords="100,100,50" title="Area 1" alt="Area 1 
(circular, central)"> <!-- no href -->
</map>
<form action="submit.cgi">
   <input type="image" src="200x200.png" usemap="#m">
</form>

What are you suggesting should happen:
* when you click on a part of the <input> that is outside the circle?
* when you click on a part of the <input> that is inside the circle?
* when you select the circle <area> using a keyboard (or something 
equivalent) and activate it?

> However, it COULD be much more than that advantage wise. By liaison with 
> the CSS WG, we could encourage better CSS support for client-side image 
> maps to provide richer UI experiences for users using those image maps. 
> Relevant CSS properties include border, outline, height and width, etc.) 
> CSS3 or beyond could add properties to add certain masks to the image 
> (like enlighten to make the hovered, focussed or activated area become 
> brighter).

That doesn't seem relevant to the discussion about <input usemap> - it 
just applies to normal client-side image maps via <img usemap>. It may 
be nice if you could style <area>s, but I think that's solely CSS and is 
unrelated to the HTML WG.

(I would expect it's not something that would work easily in CSS, since 
CSS thinks everything is a box whereas <area>s can be circles and 
polygons instead. If you only want styled boxes, you can use 
absolutely-positioned <div>s instead of <map>/<area>s and then it 
already works. But in any case, the styling of image maps sounds like a 
CSS issue and not HTML.)

>> If you're not using a server side, there's no point in using 
>> server-side image maps, so <input usemap> is irrelevant - just use 
>> client-side image maps.
> 
> I thought we were discussing client-side image maps. I hadn't said 
> anything in support of server-side image maps (though they have their 
> place, but I hadn't said anything  in favor of them).

My understanding of this thread is that we were discussing <input 
usemap>, as it says in the subject line; and the whole point of <input 
usemap> is that it acts like a server-side image map as well as a 
client-side image map. When you only want one or the other, you can use 
<input type=image> (server-side) or <img ismap> (server-side) or <img 
usemap> (client-side).

-- 
Philip Taylor
philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk

Received on Thursday, 16 August 2007 12:54:36 UTC