Another example of this technique can be seen on the "Beautiful Britain" page which I again suggest you have a look at. The image as you see it is basically the same as the original, single image. But although it appears as a single image it is in fact four images, divided up roughly as shown in the table on the right (the proportions of the cells in this table are not exact, but the arrangement is the same).The actual code for the "Beautiful Britain" multipart image is shown on your handout - have a good look at how a table is used to glue the image back together.
Each of these images has been turned into a link to a different destination. What you might be wondering is, why bother? The end result is just the same as if this were an image map with no "inactive" space, and it would be a lot more straightforward to do it that way.
For a straightforward multipart like this, yes, it probably is easier to do it as an image map. But in the next lecture I am going to enhance this image by the use of what are called rollovers; a technique by which images can be made to change state (or "roll over") when the mouse pointer is over them. When this is combined with the use of multiparts we will see a significant development - that only part of what appears to be a single image will "roll over" instead of the whole image. (It's an optical illusion - these are still separate images - but the effect is the same). This is the first advantage of multipart images over an "ordinary" image map. |
