Tungsten Rings Info Blog

A cool way to present directory results is to use a clickable map that makes it easier and more attractive way for your visitors to find information

With the new JQuery plugin javascript techniques being developed across the net, it is now exciting to use image maps again. For instance the great jquery plugin MapHilight by David Lynch actually hilights areas of coordinates that are plotted in a way that can be easily edited.

Creating a perfect hover over effect for any image map is an ordeal and plotting coordinates to make this effect is even more time consuming but very worthwhile as you can see in this demo clickable map of the UK and Ireland. If you dont pay attention to detail the effect is lost and it wont look good. Perfectly plotted coordinates for county and state maps make a big difference.

OK so we have all the correct coordinates plotted to produce a great hover over effect, so now we need to have a nice map design for the map in question. This is also a tedious job for a webmaster to create and trace county borders…that’s why It’s best to find a layered photoshop images with all the state borders traced with the pen tool 1 pixel in black on a white background.

There you have we have it ready made clickable maps for your website or blog, usually at 600 pixels width perfect for most web pages. The whole process of making a clickable map like this from scratch is very time consuming and can be very expensive to pay a webmaster to create this and even worse days and weeks of your own precious time if you decide to make it yourself. Plotting tight coordinates for the 130 clickable counties of the United Kingdom and Ireland would take weeks to complete. See this excellent result clickable map of the USA .

If ever you need a clickable map of PORTUGAL, EUROPE, GERMANY, FRANCE and ASIA there are some great maps to download with editable photoshop images and html code to save yourself a mountain of precious time. One last note: Joomla users can experience difficulty adding image maps to their pages, some of these maps have a solution for this proble… that’s a big relief for Joomla users that have tried and failed to add clickable maps before.