Mapping it out

All well and good, but what's in the map? It's not as complicated as it seems - there are just a few lines the describe the different shapes in the picture and what happens when you click on them. You can describe circles, rectangles and polygons, and a default response for when people don't click on one of the hot spots.

The next pages explain how image maps work in more detail, but if you want to save time, you should download one of the many programs designed to create imagemaps for you, like WebMap for the Macintosh, or MapThis for Windows. Both programs let you highlight areas in your picture and automatically create an image map file for you, without having to worry about how everything works. If you're trying to create a complex map, it's almost certainly worth using one of these programs rather than trying to build the map yourself by hand.

With a few image maps and lists, it should be possible to produce a very professional looking web site. In part 3, we'll look at how to add forms and scripts to your web pages to make them interactive.