Revisiting Image Maps | CSS-Tricks
May 1, 2025
Let’s run through a quick refresher. Image maps date all the way back to HTML 3.2, where, first, server-side maps and then client-side maps defined clickable regions over an image using map and area elements. They were popular for graphics, maps, and navigation, but their use declined with the rise of CSS, SVG, and JavaScript.
A bit more web design nostalgia today. Most developers these days would have very likely never heard of an image map. These HTML elements were a way of associating links with regions of an image. In the days before CSS layout, before web fonts, almost all web design was done by rendering your design into an image. And so then making various parts of that image links was very powerful.
Here Andy Clarke revisits the map element (it’s still part of HTML–like almost everything that ever as been) for a project he’s currently working on.
Who knows, one day it might be the right tool for something you are working on.
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