An image map is a web site image which will link you to different destination if you click on them. In simple words they are clickable web site design images which will navigate you to a different page or to a section of the same page. Such web site design image is made in HTML and XHTML code. The coordinates of the specific image that you want to use for you web site design image are marked and a hyperlink is created for that area which will take you to various destination. The main aim of web site design image map is to provide an easy way of linking different parts of an image without dividing the image into separate image files. This is an important consideration in web marketing and design.
You can make image maps by yourself with the help of a text editor for your web site design image. But this will require the website developer to know about HTML coding and also about the technicalities involved in knowing the coordinates of the areas where they want to place over the web site design image. That is why, majority of the image maps that are coded by hand are simple polygons. It takes lot of time and effort to create an image map using a text editor out of your web site design image. This difficulty was soon eliminated by the introduction of various other applications which helped the designer to create web site design image maps rapidly and effortlessly.
You can map any web site design image with their vector graphics editor. You just have to define the areas in terms of x and y coordinates i.e. the horizontal and the vertical distance from the left hand corner of the image. After you specify the coordinates that will act as sensitive area in your web site design image, you need to mention a uniform resource locator (URL) or web address that will be linked to when the user clicks on the highlighted area. This is how an image map is created from your web page design image.
The coordinates are written in pixels in a different file called a map file or in the same HTML file that have the link to the web site design image map. There are many tools that provide a graphical interface for making an image map if you don’t know to determine the coordinates. Earlier, you had to send the map file to the server but now the developer of the web site design image can place the map information at the client side also. Web site design image maps are very popular and are broadly used by many websites to make their site more interactive. Furthermore, web site design image maps are mostly used by the web designers when they feel that a particular information that you need to put across is better presented visually than in text. The best use of web site image map is certainly for map as they make them more communicative.