Re: My comments on tables vs image maps

Image maps - just say no.

To make long stroy short, the problems with image maps 
are mostly usability problems in graphical media. 

Shurel:
When in 'Text' mode, visited, unvisited, active and (IE)hover works 
perfectly well, with the assistance of CSS.
So where is the argument.

Nir:
1. W3C hover, not IE hover. Also Lynx marks the hovered link 
with a different color (although it has a completely different 
pointing device).

2. You don't need CSS for hover, both Lynx and IE4 apply 
user's default hover colors/styles without any stylesheet of 
the author.

3. The argument is that most (or all?) versions of Netscape 
and Explorer cannot be configured to 'Text' mode. 
They present "alt" text is a small size font, even if it 
is H1.

The only graphical browser that I know that can be 
configured to something close to text mode is Opera.  

Users of Netscape and Explorer in graphical mode with 
images either on or off suffer a lot from websites written 
under the assumption that their readers are stupid people 
who can't read,  or "visual-dependant[sic.]" as someone put it.

Also in graphical media with no mouse (e.g. tv ) 
image maps constitute a very serious usability 
problem. 

Regards,

Nir Dagan                            
Assistant Professor of Economics      
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona (Spain)

email: dagan@upf.es
Website: http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/

Received on Thursday, 30 July 1998 11:49:05 UTC