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home > design tips > web site design > image maps

Image maps and web page design

An image map is a single graphic image that allows users to access different web pages by clicking on different areas of the graphic image. On our web site, we use an image map as a means of site navigation at the top of our page.

An image map can either be a GIF or a JPEG. The navigation buttons on this web page are GIF images. The following graphic image is a JPEG image:

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Image maps can be a creative way of showing how to navigate your web site. The following are some basic rules to using image maps on web pages:

  1. Since you want your entire web site to be easy to find, search engines should be able to index every web page on your web site. Many search engines cannot follow the links inside of an image map, so it is very important to put text links or other small graphic images elsewhere on your web pages.

  2. Since you want your entire web site to be easy to navigate, you will need to provide an alternative navigation method for people using text-based browsers and for people choosing not to show graphic images in their browsers.

  3. Since you want your entire web site to be quick to download, you might want to consider how much download time is added when you add either an image map or a set of navigational buttons to your web pages. An image map tends to be a rather large graphic image, both in K and in dimension (length and width), significantly increasing the download time of your web pages. However, you might find that an image map is smaller in file size than set of navigational buttons.

  4. Sometimes, if you are using a mouseover effect on site navigation, a mouseover using a series of image maps might be quicker to download than a series of on/off navigation buttons.

Thus, if you do choose to use an image map on your web pages, we recommend that you use text-based links both for search engine indexing, for users of text-based browsers, and for people who turn off the graphic images in their browsers.

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