#Dain:...

[jcmarchi]

Revisiting Image Maps

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/revisiting-image-maps/

Revisiting Image Maps

I mentioned last time that I’ve been working on a new website for Emmy-award-winning game composer Mike Worth. He hired me to create a highly graphical design that showcases his work.

Mike loves ’90s animation, particularly Disney’s Duck Tales and other animated series. He challenged me to find a way to incorporate their retro ’90s style into his design without making it a pastiche. But that wasn’t my only challenge. I also needed to achieve that ’90s feel by using up-to-the-minute code to maintain accessibility, performance, responsiveness, and semantics.

Designing for Mike was like a trip back to when mainstream website design seemed more spontaneous and less governed by conventions and best practices. Some people describe these designs as “whimsical”:

adjective

spontaneously fanciful or playful

given to whims; capricious

quaint, unusual, or fantastic

— Collins English Dictionary

But I’m not so sure that’s entirely accurate. “Playful?” Definitely. “Fanciful?” Possibly. But “fantastic?” That depends. “Whimsy” sounds superfluous, so I call it “expressive” instead.

Studying design from way back, I remembered how websites often included graphics that combined branding, content, and navigation. Pretty much every reference to web design in the ’90s — when I designed my first website — talks about Warner Brothers’ Space Jam from 1996.

Warner Brothers’ Space Jam (1996)

So, I’m not going to do that.

Brands like Nintendo used their home pages to direct people to their content while making branded visual statements. Cheestrings combined graphics with navigation, making me wonder why we don’t see designs like this today. Goosebumps typified this approach, combining cartoon illustrations with brightly colored shapes into a functional and visually rich banner, proving that being useful doesn’t mean being boring.

Left to right: Nintendo, Cheestrings, Goosebumps.

In the ’90s, when I developed graphics for websites like these, I either sliced them up and put their parts in tables or used mostly forgotten image maps.

A brief overview of properties and values

Let’s run through a quick refresher. Image maps date all the way back to HTML 3.2, where, first, server-side maps and then client-side maps defined clickable regions over an image using map and area elements. They were popular for graphics, maps, and navigation, but their use declined with the rise of CSS, SVG, and JavaScript.

<map> adds clickable areas to a bitmap or vector image.

<map name="projects"> ... </map>

That <map> is linked to an image using the usemap attribute:

<img usemap="#projects" ...>

Those elements can have separate href and alt attributes and can be enhanced with ARIA to improve accessibility:

<map name="projects"> <area href="" alt="" … /> ... </map>

The shape attribute specifies an area’s shape. It can be a primitive circle or rect or a polygon defined by a set of absolute x and y coordinates:

<area shape="circle" coords="..." ... /> <area shape="rect" coords="..." ... /> <area shape="poly" coords="..." ... />

Despite their age, image maps still offer plenty of benefits. They’re lightweight and need (almost) no JavaScript. More on that in just a minute. They’re accessible and semantic when used with alt, ARIA, and title attributes. Despite being from a different era, even modern mobile browsers support image maps.

Design by Andy Clarke, Stuff & Nonsense. Mike Worth’s website will launch in April 2025, but you can see examples from this article on CodePen.

My design for Mike Worth includes several graphic navigation elements, which made me wonder if image maps might still be an appropriate solution.

Image maps in action

Mike wants his website to showcase his past work and the projects he’d like to do. To make this aspect of his design discoverable and fun, I created a map for people to explore by pressing on areas of the map to open modals. This map contains numbered circles, and pressing one pops up its modal.

My first thought was to embed anchors into the external map SVG:

<img src="projects.svg" alt="Projects"> <svg ...> ... <a href="..."> <circle cx="35" cy="35" r="35" fill="#941B2F"/> <path fill="#FFF" d="..."/> </a> </svg>

This approach is problematic. Those anchors are only active when SVG is inline and don’t work with an <img> element. But image maps work perfectly, even though specifying their coordinates can be laborious. Fortunately, plenty of tools are available, which make defining coordinates less tedious. Upload an image, choose shape types, draw the shapes, and copy the markup:

<img src="projects.svg" usemap="#projects-map.svg"> <map name="projects-map.svg"> <area href="" alt="" coords="..." shape="circle"> <area href="" alt="" coords="..." shape="circle"> ... </map>

Image maps work well when images are fixed sizes, but flexible images present a problem because map coordinates are absolute, not relative to an image’s dimensions. Making image maps responsive needs a little JavaScript to recalculate those coordinates when the image changes size:

function resizeMap() ["load", "resize"].forEach(event => window.addEventListener(event, resizeMap) );

I still wasn’t happy with this implementation as I wanted someone to be able to press on much larger map areas, not just the numbered circles.

Every <path> has coordinates which define how it’s drawn, and they’re relative to the SVG viewBox:

<svg width="1024" height="1024"> <path fill="#BFBFBF" d="…"/> </svg>

On the other hand, a map’s <area> coordinates are absolute to the top-left of an image, so <path> values need to be converted. Fortunately, Raphael Monnerat has written PathToPoints, a tool which does precisely that. Upload an SVG, choose the point frequency, copy the coordinates for each path, and add them to a map area’s coords:

<map> <area href="" shape="poly" coords="..."> <area href="" shape="poly" coords="..."> <area href="" shape="poly" coords="..."> ... </map>

More issues with image maps

Image maps are hard-coded and time-consuming to create without tools. Even with tools for generating image maps, converting paths to points, and then recalculating them using JavaScript, they could be challenging to maintain at scale.

<area> elements aren’t visible, and except for a change in the cursor, they provide no visual feedback when someone hovers over or presses a link. Plus, there’s no easy way to add animations or interaction effects.

But the deal-breaker for me was that an image map’s pixel-based values are unresponsive by default. So, what might be an alternative solution for implementing my map using CSS, HTML, and SVG?

Anchors positioned absolutely over my map wouldn’t solve the pixel-based positioning problem or give me the irregular-shaped clickable areas I wanted. Anchors within an external SVG wouldn’t work either.

But the solution was staring me in the face. I realized I needed to:

Create a new SVG path for each clickable area.

Make those paths invisible.

Wrap each path inside an anchor.

Place the anchors below other elements at the end of my SVG source.

Replace that external file with inline SVG.

I created a set of six much larger paths which define the clickable areas, each with its own fill to match its numbered circle. I placed each anchor at the end of my SVG source:

<svg … viewBox="0 0 1024 1024"> <!-- Visible content --> <g>...</g> <!-- Clickable areas -->` <g id="links">` <a href="..."><path fill="#B48F4C" d="..."/></a>` <a href="..."><path fill="#6FA676" d="..."/></a>` <a href="..."><path fill="#30201D" d="..."/></a>` ... </g> </svg>

Then, I reduced those anchors’ opacity to 0 and added a short transition to their full-opacity hover state:

#links a opacity: 0; transition: all .25s ease-in-out; #links a:hover opacity: 1;

While using an image map’s <area> sadly provides no visual feedback, embedded anchors and their content can respond to someone’s action, hint at what’s to come, and add detail and depth to a design.

I might add gloss to those numbered circles to be consistent with the branding I’ve designed for Mike. Or, I could include images, titles, or other content to preview the pop-up modals:

<g id="links"> <a href="…"> <path fill="#B48F4C" d="..."/> <image href="..." ... /> </a> </g>

Try it for yourself:

Expressive design, modern techniques

Designing Mike Worth’s website gave me a chance to blend expressive design with modern development techniques, and revisiting image maps reminded me just how important a tool image maps were during the period Mike loves so much.

Ultimately, image maps weren’t the right tool for Mike’s website. But exploring them helped me understand what I really needed: a way to recapture the expressiveness and personality of ’90s website design using modern techniques that are accessible, lightweight, responsive, and semantic. That’s what design’s about: choosing the right tool for a job, even if that sometimes means looking back to move forward.

Biography: Andy Clarke

Often referred to as one of the pioneers of web design, Andy Clarke has been instrumental in pushing the boundaries of web design and is known for his creative and visually stunning designs. His work has inspired countless designers to explore the full potential of product and website design.

Andy’s written several industry-leading books, including Transcending CSS, Hardboiled Web Design, and Art Direction for the Web. He’s also worked with businesses of all sizes and industries to achieve their goals through design.

Visit Andy’s studio, Stuff & Nonsense, and check out his Contract Killer, the popular web design contract template trusted by thousands of web designers and developers.

[gothic-btch]

Concept Art for the next chapter of my story Under the Reborn Star on AO3. (User: Gothicbtch)

Dain is taking his baby cousin to see the Tree of Life, explaining the history to him in boring detail. Khae'ya's just happy to hang out with his big cousin.

Dain: "...been here since..." bla bla bla "...very important..." bla bla bla "...sustains our entire nation..." bla bla bla

Khae internally: Big cousin is so cool, I wanna be like him one day! 😊

Note: So Kaeya is meant to be a tall kid, but I accidentally made him a tall 5 year old instead of a tall 3 year old so... extra tall 3 year old! I also forgot that Dain is 13 instead of 20 so I hope he actually looks his age lol.

Note 2: *Smacks the tree of life* I have so much lore and research packed into this baby it's insane

Edit: I was so focused on designing Dain that I forgot key parts to Kaeya's design... so ig he's in human form lmao (I'll fix it for the actual story maybe)

[enbyofdionysos]

I got further into the council of Elrond and the dwarves are fucking ride or die man

[tinukis]

day 1 - straw hat

[drawthiere]

dumb shitpost i made when 4.7 archon quest came out. #thanksdainsleif

[kingdom-of-sins]

Violet: I just killed someone

Xaden: That my girl!

Sloane: I think I just killed someone

Dain: You know there is a long lecture coming about how killing is wrong but first tell me where the body is so we can take care of it before anyone finds out

Garrick: How many did you kill?

Imogen: 50

Garrick: Damn it! I am still at 30

[bookdragon-shenanigans]

The Empyrean as shitposts (OS edition)

[BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD]

Aaric Graycastle

Violet Sorrengail

Bodhi Durran

Mira Sorrengail

Xaden Riorson

Sloane Mairi

Ridoc Gamlyn

Dain Aetos

Garrick Tavis

[intairnwetrust]

Bodhi: So Dain and Sloane are now a thing...

Xaden: I can't believe it. Aetos? Fucking Aetos. I thought Sloane had better taste in men.

Garrick: I mean Violet had a crush on Dain too.

Xaden: ...

Garrick: ...

Garrick: Please don't hit me.

[stupidlybookish]

Sloane: Crushes are the worst!

Dain: I know! Whenever I’m around mine, I always act stupid.

Sloane: Pft, you always act stupid.

Dain:

Dain: Please don’t think on that too hard.

[fancytheoristluminary]

Xaden in Fourth Wing and Iron Flame: We should not trust Aetos he is bad news

Garrick: Okay

Xaden in Onyx Storm: I think we don’t put enough trust in Aetos

Garrick: Bitch you are the one who started it

[sunlight-and-tea]

Xaden hating on Dain during his POV of chapter sixteen will never not be my favorite.

“…Aetos asks Sorrengail, panicking like the infantry soldier he should have been”

“Aetos takes his hands off Sorrengail’s shoulders, and I decide to let him keep them. For now.”

“Gods, please give me a reason to beat the pompous, Codex-loving shit out of him. Just once.”

“Odd time to grow a spine, but good for him.”

“I scoff. Fucking rule-loving coward. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as Violence. She’s half his size and a thousand times braver. Talk about a disproportionate relationship.”

“Aetos scurries away like the little rat he is.”

Xaden also calls Violet a “pint-size morsel of straight-up arsenic” during this chapter and I love that

[fantasybooksandtealeaves]

dain holding sloane by the waist so she doesn't throw hands and then letting her punch him? twice? dain telling sloane he doesn't coddle first years anymore and ordering her to train.her.signet.? dain helping her siphon when she's nervous and telling her she is life? "EYES HERE"??

I can feel the brainrot setting in and it's glorious

[fragrantblossoms]

Dr. Dain Tasker. A Snail, 1930.

[mysterylilycheeta]

Rhiannon: Don't you just hate men sometimes? They can be so useless! Imogen: Right? They're terrible! Jesinia: *signs* 100% Violet: Definitely. Xaden, Garrick, Bodhi, Ridoc, Sawyer, and Dain: Liam: Violet: Not you Liam, you're perfect! The other girls: Honestly, he is! The boys: Wh-

[zegalba]

Dain Yoon

[cqtlatte]

something unattainable