Image map in css

In this tutorial, we will see how to add clickable area to a background image to create in css the effect of image mapping without using the html element <map>.

This method is used to render part of an image interactive with the mouse on click and is valid for rectangular area.

First, I created a background image representing a top picture (type header) and a bottom menu with 4 buttons:

To this image, I will ad 5 clickable area, the first being the picture of the frog, the other 4 being the 4 buttons of the bottom menu.

To understand better what we will create, I duplicated the above picture and added a white border to each clickable area, their width and height and their position (top and left):

The html structure

The html structure consists of a simple block element div with an unique id which contains 5 elements <a> (the links), each one having their own id (to give each one their unique style) and a class name to the links of the bottom menu which share the same css style (and avoid to repeat the same css rules).

<div id="image_map">
<a href="#nogo" id="link1"></a>
<a href="#nogo" id="link2" class="menu"></a>
<a href="#nogo" id="link3" class="menu"></a>
<a href="#nogo" id="link4" class="menu"></a>
<a href="#nogo" id="link5" class="menu"></a>
</div>

The css rules to create the image mapping

We will start with the css style of the main div (id=”image_map”), we specify:

• the width: the same width as the background image
• the height: the same height as the background image
• the background image using the css property background
• the position relative needed next to position its sub elements in an absolute way

#image_map{
width:450px;
height:400px;
background:url(css_image_map.jpg) no-repeat;
position:relative;
}

The css style of the links inside ‘image_map’:

• display:block; the elements are converted from inline element to block element so that we can specify the width and height
• position:absolute; all the links are positioned in an absolute way in rapport to the main div.

#image_map a{
display:block;
position:absolute;
}

All the links of the bottom menu share the same css property, for this reason I chosed to use a commune class to avoid to repeat the same css rule: the width of 100px, the height of 50px and their position at 340px form the top border of the main div.

#image_map a.menu{
width:100px;
height:50px;
top:340px;
}

Other then that, each has a unique id (link1, link2, link3…) used to impost their specific style.

For the first link which will cover the area of the picture of the frog: the width of 430px, the height of 320px, the vertical position at 10px from the top border and horizontal of 10px from the left border of the main div.

#image_map a#link1{
width:430px;
height:320px;
top:10px;
left:10px;
}

As we have already specify the css rules for the class ‘menu’ of the 4 bottom links, it will remain to specify for each one of them their horizontal position from the left border of the main div.

#image_map a#link2{
left:10px;
}
#image_map a#link3{
left:120px;
}
#image_map a#link4{
left:230px;
}
#image_map a#link5{
left:340px;
}

The result of the image map

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css map, css mapping, image map, image mapping

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