Re[3]: Project X-long relpy, and more questions

[Iain Harrison <iharrison -at- SCT -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

  David Blyth said:

  o Imagemaps are great!  The problem isn't with the use of imagemaps
    themselves but with large graphics which are used as image maps.
    A small graphic can be used just as well.

    I can't agree with that. What is the great feature of imagemaps
    that you like? The only things that I can see they offer is that
    they allow non-rectangular hotspots (which you can't do with
    simple graphics links) and that they hide the destination page
    address, so people can't link to those so easily from other
    sites.

    Have you ever tried to use one with the graphics turned off? No
    ALT text makes them unusable. Browsers have to reload pages
    every time you return to them using an image map, whereas using
    a normal graphic link gives a filename that the browser can
    cache.

     And in reply to my:

 Iain> Make the page snappy and interesting to read, easy to navigate and
 Iain> useable with text-only browsers (or ones with graphics switched off).

     DB continued:

Last I checked, the IBM Official <insert event here> Web sites are downwardly
compatible to HTML 2.0 - _not_ to text-only browsers.  How much time and
money do you have to be compatible to everyone?

     It isn't necessary to skip every HTML feature, but you should make sure
     that a browser that doesn't recognise that feature can still display an
     intelligible page. This means using links with ALT tags, * marks in
     'pretty' divider graphics and the like. Once you have that mindset, it
     takes little or no time or money to do.

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