[whatwg] Image maps: should we drop <a coords="">?
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Mon Apr 11 09:25:00 PDT 2005
There are fours ways of doing image maps in HTML4:
Server-side with form submit:
<form ...> <input type="image" ...> </form>
Server-side with hyperlink:
<a ...> <img ismap ...> </a>
Client-side with <area>:
<img usemap="#foo"> (or <object usemap="#foo"></object>)
<map id="foo">
...
<area coords="..." ...>
</map>
Client-side with <a> (doesn't work in WinIE6, works in Moz, Opera):
<img usemap="#foo"> (or <object usemap="#foo"></object>)
<map id="foo">
...
<a coords="..." ...></a>
</map>
It seems type="image" is used a lot. ismap="" is also used quite a bit --
roughly 2% of Web sites seem to use it. <area> is used a lot -- almost all
image maps use it. I couldn't find any uses of <a coords="">. (Data based
on a sample of over 600,000 randomly chosen sites.)
I propose we drop <a coords=""> from HTML5. While it is definitely a
better design than <area>, it isn't a substantially better design, and
having both is confusing. Since here we have a case where one of the
options is rarely used (if at all), I believe we can take the opportunity
to prune the spec without ill effect. (In contrast, in the <button> vs
<input type="submit"> case, we couldn't drop either because they were
both heavily used.)
Anyone want us to keep <a coords="">?
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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