Imagemaps vs images

[tzigone]

hello,
could you make a performance comparison for images and imagemaps?can you give informatin about page load time measures for those?
i have a logo bannner at the top of my site and on left side there are 3 links which are on an imagemap. i wonder if it is worth to make these 3 images seperate pictures and remove imagemap?

 

[Jeanco]

Well they way it works for me, is I use an image map if there are no mouse-over effects or something like that. If there are then its better to slice it up and use seperate images.

 

[nicholas]

There doesn't seem to be that big a difference between the two, *performance-wise* ... you probably want to decide between both for specific reasons.

For example, rollovers as mentioned above, *or* non-rectangular areas (like ovals, curves, etc.) that you want to be hyperlinked.

 

[ntrance]

The difference between performance should be minimal - a map might add a bit more code to the page than a couple of extra images but slicing "could" add more to the image(s) overall size.

 

[miika]

It's mostly matter of taste... I like slicing more, I like the way a page "builds itself" on a slow connection (just remeber to have widths and heights set on each slice!)... also with slicing you can reduce size by selecting what areas of the image should be gif/jpg and have separate palette/compressing settings for different areas. Slicing adds to downloadtime a bit because browser makes a new request (opens a new connection) for each image. I've never been a fan of image maps, but I'd say it always depends on the image what method to use...

Oh, more things, why don't you make a small test on one page and test the performance yourself? And one thing I forgot about slicing is that if you slice you can have ALT tags for all buttons, that way the site can be still used even if vistor has turned the "show image" off in a browser, or the images don't load for a reason or another....

 

[RakeshRaja]

i think instead of usting maps slice them

it will be easier in loading

 

[Anthony]

I think maybe a combination of the two alternatives sometimes works best. Decide on whichever way will be easier for the user!