[whatwg] [html5] HTMLMapElement.images

[Lachlan Hunt]

Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> Basically finding the position of the associated image elements so that 
> you can show "popups" and so more easily without hardcoding that a 
> particular image belongs to that map and vice versa.
> 
>   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=67731&action=view
> 
> ... has a nice example (works in Internet Explorer only).

Interesting.  The concept is a lot like these examples in recent A List 
Apart article:

http://alistapart.com/articles/cssmaps
* http://alistapart.com/d/cssmaps/stickymap/
* http://alistapart.com/d/cssmaps/multiple/

The difference with those, however, is that they're not marked up using 
<map>, but rather the map is a background image with list items 
positioned over the top.

I've been thinking about this a little since that article was published 
and I think we need to work on improving the semantics and functionality 
of <map>, so that it can handle things like that easily, without 
excessive CSS positioning and JavaScript.

Being able to semantically associate areas on a map with related content 
that can then be shown in a variety of ways, such as a tooltip on hover 
or click.  It would also be cool if it were easier to do something like 
the many similar features found in Google Maps.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/