Lost My GoogleFu. Boo. :)

October 3, 2009 9:28 PM

Website Creation - What do I look for in order to find how to make a website of a particular type; the sort that is a background image with no visible links; but hovering over an item in, and then clicking over an item in, the background image acts as a link? I'm sure there's loads of instructions out there but I can't even find a site to show what I mean, letalone use search terms that return any kind of meaningful results!

Thank you for any suggestions :)

db

posted by DrtyBlvd to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Image map.
posted by rokusan at 9:31 PM on October 3, 2009

There are ways in Flash to do this, but the old school way of doing it is by image map. On preview, rokusan was first.
posted by paulsc at 9:34 PM on October 3, 2009

Well, that was quick.

In case you need some extra inspiration, here's an excellent map!
posted by Juliet Banana at 9:34 PM on October 3, 2009

I've found this tutorial from the W3 schools to be helpful in creating image maps. You'll need an image software like Photoshop (or the free program GIMP) that lets you determine the coordinates in the image. But don't use the image map tool in GIMP -- it isn't very good, in my experience.
posted by k8lin at 9:45 PM on October 3, 2009

You can also do this more easily (assuming you aren't familiar with dreamweaver) with absolutely positioned display:block links. I use the firefox plugin "measureit" because i'm graphic program retarded, to figure out everything's location.
posted by shownomercy at 10:11 PM on October 3, 2009

rokusan had it by a whisker! Superfastfingers. Close second though:)

More seriously - thank you all for your answers, suggestions and comments - Now I'm off to see if i can make one.
posted by DrtyBlvd at 4:31 AM on October 4, 2009

If you're on a Mac, there's a free and excellent program - YokMap - that will do all the heavy-lifting for you.
posted by revmitcz at 7:16 PM on October 4, 2009