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Revisiting Image Maps
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.
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. 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. 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.
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