new fangled image maps?

January 20, 2006 2:31 PM

I want to display images of stained glass windows on a church website. What is the best way, method, software, code etc to highlight details on the initial image and then have the user mouse over or click to get a larger shot of the detail, with a caption if possible?

For example, we have an altar window that depicts scenes from the life of Christ. I would like to have an initial image of the whole window and then allow the user to interact with the image to learn more about the individual scenes and symbols in it. I know I could just make it an image map, but I figure there's got to be something new and exciting out there to do this.

posted by Biblio to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

the best way.
Define best, and tell us about your skill sets. If you're just doing your church a favor because you like to tinker and you're not proficient in web design, I'd suggest using two frames or iframes; one to display an image map to display the initial image, which then loads details into another frame (or iframe). It's stone simple, and can be brought together in a few hours if you already have the source images.
posted by boo_radley at 2:36 PM on January 20, 2006

Response by poster: I am a volunteer tinkerer with pretty solid html and css skills. I have the coffee cup editor and the gimp for images, and ideally I'd like this to be something clean, easy to understand and accessable to the bulk of our parishoners, many of whom are older and not computer savvy at all.,
posted by Biblio at 2:46 PM on January 20, 2006

There's slayeroffice's slideshow effects. There's six variations under the <code> section on the right hand sidebar.

Number six was especially amazing, considering it's all javascript
posted by boo_radley at 3:13 PM on January 20, 2006

flash content is the next best thing from image maps. it would allow you to have oddly shaped elements and the overall product would be much more beautiful than with image maps.

assuming you don't want to dish out however many thousands of dollars macromedia is charging for flash professional 8 these days, i recommend SWiSHmax. also, it is way easier to use and yields some pretty cool results.

if the price is still daunting, have a student buy it for you (costs about 1/4 of the retail).
posted by tysiva at 5:56 PM on January 20, 2006

Best answer: I think that this javascript effect is pretty awesome and would work well with what you're doing.

You could make the larger image have some text on it. . .
posted by visual mechanic at 7:16 PM on January 20, 2006

Response by poster: I ended up using the lightbox plugin for Wordpress. You can see the effect here.
Thanks!
posted by Biblio at 11:10 AM on May 15, 2006