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oh man <map> and <area> yes kids today just don't know the pain we went through. this is back when every single byte mattered and saving a few MB was the diffe

oh man <map> and <area> yes kids today just don't know the pain we went through. this is back when every single byte mattered and saving a few MB was the difference between a good user experience and a bad one. for those that never used this, you would do something like <img src="funnycats.jpg" usemap="#funnycats-map">  <map name="funnycats-map"> <shape="rect" coords="34,44,270,350" href="cats.html"> </map> most ppl used something like Dreamweaver but bad-asses would do their own coordinates.

gavinray 8d ago
My web dev experience began right before ES6, when browsers still did not do parallel asset loads and so spritesheets were common Why could you not have defined elements overlayed using high z index that were clickable, like invisible divs?
- jgraham 8d ago
  Server side image maps predate javascript. They were in early versions of Mosaic. Client side image maps and the script element were (AFAICT) both introduced in Netscape 2. Even when scripting was introduced, you didn't necessarily have the ability to move elements around freely on the page. I think (but I'm not certain) that it wasn't until Netscape 4 era that you had enough layout primitives to implement the multi-layer positioning approach to custom clickable areas.
  - gavinray 8d ago
    With plain HTML you could have done this, though? <div class="image-map"> <img src="funnycats.jpg"> <a href="cats.html" style="position:absolute; background: transparent; left: 8.5%; top: 12.5%; width: 59%; height: 87%;" ></a> </div>
    - matsemann 8d ago
      But only square hit targets then (until clip paths much later). Image maps supported polygons and circles. And position absolute is still a few years after image maps.
      - gavinray 8d ago
        Ahh that makes a lot of sense -- thanks!
      - cxr 8d ago
        It wasn't just the use of absolute positioning that wouldn't have worked. CSS didn't even exist yet.
    - deleted 8d ago
      [deleted]
1-more 8d ago
The only time I ever needed dreamweaver: I found an open source imagemap of the US states and I needed to scale it to match my background image of the US provided by an art director. Dreamweaver let me see all the <area>s easily. Maybe there was another way to do it. Fun fact: the art director wanted states to grow on hover, but acquiesced to having them change color when I pointed out how impossible it would be to click on Rhode Island if you'd hovered Massachusetts first. I don't even know how I would have done the grow effect, tbh.

gavinray 8d ago

My web dev experience began right before ES6, when browsers still did not do parallel asset loads and so spritesheets were common Why could you not have defined elements overlayed using high z index that were clickable, like invisible divs?

jgraham 8d ago
Server side image maps predate javascript. They were in early versions of Mosaic. Client side image maps and the script element were (AFAICT) both introduced in Netscape 2. Even when scripting was introduced, you didn't necessarily have the ability to move elements around freely on the page. I think (but I'm not certain) that it wasn't until Netscape 4 era that you had enough layout primitives to implement the multi-layer positioning approach to custom clickable areas.
- gavinray 8d ago
  With plain HTML you could have done this, though? <div class="image-map"> <img src="funnycats.jpg"> <a href="cats.html" style="position:absolute; background: transparent; left: 8.5%; top: 12.5%; width: 59%; height: 87%;" ></a> </div>
  - matsemann 8d ago
    But only square hit targets then (until clip paths much later). Image maps supported polygons and circles. And position absolute is still a few years after image maps.
    - gavinray 8d ago
      Ahh that makes a lot of sense -- thanks!
    - cxr 8d ago
      It wasn't just the use of absolute positioning that wouldn't have worked. CSS didn't even exist yet.
  - deleted 8d ago
    [deleted]

1-more 8d ago

The only time I ever needed dreamweaver: I found an open source imagemap of the US states and I needed to scale it to match my background image of the US provided by an art director. Dreamweaver let me see all the <area>s easily. Maybe there was another way to do it. Fun fact: the art director wanted states to grow on hover, but acquiesced to having them change color when I pointed out how impossible it would be to click on Rhode Island if you'd hovered Massachusetts first. I don't even know how I would have done the grow effect, tbh.