WebSTAR Image Map

Image maps let you specify hot spots in the graphics that you serve. This allows you to make maps and other graphical hyperlinks. You do this by mapping the coordinate location to the information that is created along with the image in the map file (many HTML editors allow you to create this map file automatically).

The WebSTAR web server, with the WebSTAR Image Map Plug-In, supports server-side image maps . WebSTAR Image Map supports these NCSA methods in the map file:

circle
poly
rect
point
default

The Image Map Plug-In is compatible with NCSA format, but not with CERN format, so if you are using an HTML editor or an image-map generator, be sure that the preference is set to the NCSA format.

Newer browsers support client-side image maps , where the client (browser) finds the location. With WebSTAR Image Map, even older browsers can use your image maps.

You do not need to do anything to administer the WebSTAR Image Map Plug-In. The server will automatically take care of this when it gets the URL ending in .map . If you would like to use other suffixes or files without suffixes, you can make an entry in the Suffix Map Table and use "MAP" as the Action see Suffix Mapping ).

Using the WebSTAR Image Map Plug-In

WebSTAR does not install the WebSTAR Image Map Plug-In by default. Use the WebSTAR Server Suite Installer to install it. It does not require any additional RAM.

The Image Map Plug-In is always enabled, and will be called any time you have a URL that ends in .map .

In your HTML pages, you will need to indicate that your graphic is a clickable map.

In this example, the "powered by WebSTAR" links to the StarNine website, and the Mac OS logo links to the Apple website.

The image file is named poweredbywebstar.gif and the map file is poweredbywebstar.map .

The map file is quite simple, since we just include two rectangles:

 

	# Format: NCSA

 
	default /

 
	rect http://www.starnine.com/webstar/ 0,0 218,54

 
	rect http://www.apple.com/ 218,0 272,54

1 The # is a comment saying that the map file uses the NCSA Image Map format.
2 All clicks on non-specified locations will go to the default page for this site.
3 Clicks in the rectangle defined by 0 at the left, 0 at the top, 218 at the right and 54 at the bottom will go to StarNine.
4 Clicks in the rectangle defined by left, top at 218,0 and right, bottom at 218,54 will go to Apple.

To use this image and map in an HTML page in the same folder, link the image to the map and make sure it has an ISMAP tag:

To link to an image or map file in another folder, just use the file path.

 

<A HREF="poweredby.map">

 
<IMG SRC="poweredby.gif" ISMAP></A>

Use your gif and map file names to create server-side image maps for your own graphics.

For more information on image maps, see the NCSA tutorial at:

 
http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/imagemapping.html