Re: Clarification per MAP navbars

<LANG="LA">Mea maxima culpa. Non Cogitavit. Nonne sum?</LANG>

<LANG="EN">Oh. Sometimes I forget how stupid I can be. I had made the 
fairly fatal error of not checking how browsers implemented the specs, 
and what was in the older specs.

Which explains why Nir must have thought I was stupid - right again.

It is possible to achieve what I am setting out to achieve - the graphic 
imagemap at the top for Microsoft (and everyone who has a site that looks 
like that) which can be rendered instead as a set of text links at the 
bottom for anyone who prefers to read their site that way. This is based 
on the premise that people really do like using imagemaps.

The difference is that to my examples AREAs must be added.

<BODY>
<IMG SRC="map.gif" USEMAP="the-map" ALT="Imagemap - links at end of page">
...

...
<DIV>
<MAP>
<AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="0,0,100,100" HREF="some.htm" ALT="Somewhere">
<AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="100,0,200,100" HREF="some.htm" ALT="Elsewhere">
<AREA SHAPE="rect" COORDS="200,0,300,100" HREF="some.htm" ALT="Otherwhere">
<P><A HREF="some.htm" SHAPE="rect" COORDS="0,0,100,100">Somewhere</A> | 
<A HREF="else.htm" SHAPE="rect" COORD="100,0,200,100">Elsewhere</A> |
<A HREF="other.htm" SHAPE="rect" COORDS="200,0,300,100">Otherwhere</A> </P> 
</MAP>
</DIV>

With CSS2 positioning and Attribute Matching, this enables styling on the 
presence of USEMAP and on MAP itself to control which parts are 
rendered, and when or where. With CSS1 it is possible for an author to 
hide the MAP and for a few users to force its display. (Communicator 
apparently won't allow the use of an author style sheet) Using classes 
would provide a kluge that allowed CSS1 control of the imagemap's 
presentation.

So the implications for the guidelines are:

Imagemaps:

Don't use server sided ones. Use Client-side, with ALT on AREAs and a set 
of text links. [P1]

Place the MAP itself, including the redundant links, at the end of the 
page [P3] Rationale: non-visual users find it tiring to wade through 
standard links before getting to the content.

In the ALT text of the element which provides the Imagemap say "Imagemap 
- links repeated at end of page" or something[p2] Rationale: It will help 
non-visual users orient themselves if they know that the imagemap and text 
links are the same set of links before they wade through them all.

For UA's we then ask them to implement text links as content for MAP as 
per HTML4.0, with the text of the link providing alternative content in 
the same way as ALT does for AREA [p2?]

Am I making more sense now?

Charles McCathieNevile

Received on Monday, 16 November 1998 20:06:32 UTC