Are HTML Image Maps still used?

Solution 1:

Yes, people do still use image maps. An alternative would be to position elements using absolute positioning and CSS but that's not necessarily better. It also doesn't allow you to have shapes like in image maps

Solution 2:

They are in the HTML5 specification, so they will not get deprecated.

You can still freely use them, they certainly still have their place in web development. Or I could say, those rare occasions exist where you can best solve something with an image map.

Solution 3:

An alternative solution to using CSS or image maps would be to make use of SVG graphics embedded into the HTML dom.

One tutorial on how to achieve mouseover effects using this technique is described in this tutorial: http://www.petercollingridge.co.uk/data-visualisation/mouseover-effects-svgs

The key takeaway being that SVG elements also trigger traditional dom events including onmouseover and onmouseout.

Solution 4:

Yes html image maps are good especially if you want your area to be a polygon. You can add rollover effects to you map as well with javascript. There is a nice tutorial and demo here:

http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Image-Map-Rollover/3484

Solution 5:

Image Maps are still in HTML5 specifications, supported by all browsers.

They can be adapted to responsive design using jQuery RWD Image Maps: https://github.com/stowball/jQuery-rwdImageMaps

It detects and automatically resize the image maps coordinates.

It's also available for Wordpress developers as plugin: http://wordpress.org/plugins/responsive-image-maps/

Simple and effective solution.