Image map headache: too many points!

[Jim Land]

I've got an image and an image map, and they work fine together.

See it here: http://www.jim-land.com/testing/MapPage01.htm

But the image map has way too many points (vertices) in its 87 polygons.
The html file is over 100k. That's too big to fit into our content-
managment system, not to mention that it takes too long to load--about 30
seconds--over a 58k dialup connection.

The problem is that the polygons are far too accurate.... they contain
many more points than necessary. (I salute whoever made the image map,
and admire the precision they obtained, but it's just *too* *good* for my
purposes.)

- Example: Rock County (low left corner of image) is basically a
parallelogram, and could be mapped with four points, but its image map
contains over 80 points!

Sooo.... is there any easy way to reduce the number of points in those
polygons? I mean, without editing the text file by hand? Or creating 87
new image maps? (ugh!) 8^(

Thanks in advance!

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Jim Land <Rr************ ****@hotNOSPAMm ail.NOSPAMcom> wrote:

I've got an image and an image map, and they work fine together.

See it here: http://www.jim-land.com/testing/MapPage01.htm
I guess it works in principle, but inefficiently, as you describe.
There's a minor flaw I think, though: the ALT texts all contain the word
"County" for no good purpose. Think about listening to them all; that
word almost doubles the time. On the other hand, a client-side image map
should always be accompanied with a an alternative that consists of
simple links*), which could be in alphabetic order, so for MAP elements,
the ALT attributes are mostly a matter of principle.
*) Especially considering the almost total lack of support to such image
maps in Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, and other popular browsers
in a mode where image loading has been disabled. For details on this,
see or hear http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/mapalt.html
(I salute whoever made the
image map, and admire the precision they obtained, but it's just
*too* *good* for my purposes.)
I agree. But probably someone used a program to generate the AREA
elements. A person who does such things by hand, or even
semiautomatical ly (interactively using a mapping program) probably
notices the rectangular areas and defines them as rectangles, for which
you could use AREA with shape="rect".
Sooo.... is there any easy way to reduce the number of points in
those polygons? I mean, without editing the text file by hand?

I think you need to rewrite the entire MAP element for that - it's faster
than fixing the existing one. But you don't need to do that by hand. You
could use software like
MapThis http://www.abdn.ac.uk/tools/ibmpc/mapthis/
MapEdit http://www.boutell.com/mapedit/
What they offer is a graphic interface that lets you select vertices of
areas by clicking on them, and the program generates the corresponding
AREA elements.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Steve Pugh]

On 24 Sep 2004 05:13:58 GMT, Jim Land
<Rr************ ****@hotNOSPAMm ail.NOSPAMcom> wrote:

I've got an image and an image map, and they work fine together.

See it here: http://www.jim-land.com/testing/MapPage01.htm

But the image map has way too many points (vertices) in its 87 polygons.
The html file is over 100k. That's too big to fit into our content-
managment system, not to mention that it takes too long to load--about 30
seconds--over a 58k dialup connection.

The problem is that the polygons are far too accurate.... they contain
many more points than necessary. (I salute whoever made the image map,
and admire the precision they obtained, but it's just *too* *good* for my
purposes.)

- Example: Rock County (low left corner of image) is basically a
parallelogra m, and could be mapped with four points, but its image map
contains over 80 points!

Sooo.... is there any easy way to reduce the number of points in those
polygons? I mean, without editing the text file by hand? Or creating 87
new image maps? (ugh!) 8^(

I would delete the current image map and create a new, simpler one
from scratch. It would only take me about 15 minutes to map all the
counties. The one thing that the 'Design View' in Dreamweaver is good
for is creating image maps with minimum hassle. Other software also
exists to make image maps easy.

Steve

[Pierre Goiffon]

"Jim Land" <Rr************ ****@hotNOSPAMm ail.NOSPAMcom> a écrit dans le
message de news:Xn******** *************** **********@209. 98.13.60

I've got an image and an image map, and they work fine together.

See it here: http://www.jim-land.com/testing/MapPage01.htm

But the image map has way too many points (vertices) in its 87
polygons. The html file is over 100k. That's too big

Well, you can do this server side, using a simple input type=image you will
get the x,y coordinates that was clicked on the picture. Then a server side
treatment can do whatever action is intend by clicking in the corresponding
zone of the picture !

[Harlan Messinger]

"Pierre Goiffon" <pg******@nowhe re.invalid> wrote:

"Jim Land" <Rr************ ****@hotNOSPAMm ail.NOSPAMcom> a écrit dans le
message de news:Xn******** *************** **********@209. 98.13.60

I've got an image and an image map, and they work fine together.

See it here: http://www.jim-land.com/testing/MapPage01.htm

But the image map has way too many points (vertices) in its 87
polygons. The html file is over 100k. That's too big

Well, you can do this server side, using a simple input type=image you will
get the x,y coordinates that was clicked on the picture. Then a server side
treatment can do whatever action is intend by clicking in the corresponding
zone of the picture !

Yes. But then the image map would be completely useless to people who
aren't displaying images, to people who can't use a pointing device
and use only the keyboard for interaction, and to the blind. It would
have to be supplemented with an alternative method of selecting a
country. (As Jukka points out, shortcomings in current browsers make
that advisable for client-side image maps as well.)

--
Harlan Messinger
Remove the first dot from my e-mail address.
Veuillez ôter le premier point de mon adresse de courriel.