The site I made with Xara X

[Jonathan Payne]

...is here. The site shows a walk I did across London with my new digital camera.

The map is from the Ordnance Survey using their Get-A-Map system that allows free use of maps for home pages and the like. The images were from my digital camera.

The really hard part (apart from the walk itself [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] ) was done with Xara X which I used to create the large image map, get all the dots in the right place and build up the main image.

Unfortunately it is quite a large page to download on a modem.

I hope this page gives other people some ideas for cool things that can be done with image maps.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Payne]

...is here. The site shows a walk I did across London with my new digital camera.

The map is from the Ordnance Survey using their Get-A-Map system that allows free use of maps for home pages and the like. The images were from my digital camera.

The really hard part (apart from the walk itself [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] ) was done with Xara X which I used to create the large image map, get all the dots in the right place and build up the main image.

Unfortunately it is quite a large page to download on a modem.

I hope this page gives other people some ideas for cool things that can be done with image maps.

Jonathan

[gwpriester]

to being there.

That is a really neat idea.

What would be realy cool is if the photos would automatically appear when the mouse passes over them. CoolMaps has a NetObjects Fusion plug-in that pops up a larger image when you mouse over a thumbnail.

Fun walking trip, too. Enjoy your new camera.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[rheaton]

You beat me to it Gary. I've toyed with this idea before. To reduce the load size of the big map, you might use a smaller (zoomed out) map for the overall pic and include the zoomed (bigger) map in the mousevoer image. (note- had to use PSPro to do the capture to include the mouse pointer over the zoomed image.)

example:

[rheaton]

here's the mouseover image.

[Jonathan Payne]

Gary & Ric,

Thanks for your replies.

I did think about something similar to the ideas you suggested but I was too lazy to put it together (the walk was very tiring).

I might have a look at adding a feature like this at the weekend. The only thing I am not sure about is how I can avoid making the site too slow for people using modems (although I have probably done that already).

New idea just in: I now want to do a site like this with the London Underground map. I'll pencil that in for next year.

Anyone feel like making a similar map of their home town?

Jonathan

[RAMWolff44]

seems kinda large and there are too many blank spaces as you are scrolling. Sparce here and there [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

Like the photos that you took!!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Ross Macintosh]

How did you get back?

Maybe the first map page could have a smaller version of the map to provide an overview. There could then be a link to the "Start" which opens another page featuring just a portion of the big map you made. On that page the images could pop-up onmouseover without the need for additional views of the map. The page would have navigation to allow continuation to the next portion of the walk (another page). Optionally, each page could also have a link to yet another version of the overall map - this one with the particular section of walk highlighted to put the page in context of the overall walk.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Jonathan Payne]

RamWolff: Regarding the blank spaces and the scrolling, I tend to agree that there is far too much of both. I thought about various ways of making the page but I was torn between giving a detailed map and showing the whole route.

Ross: I got there and back using the underground [trains]. Thanks for all you suggestions.

Taking on board everyone’s suggestions, the following picture shows a mock up of a new version of the page. Now if only I could had the skill to implement it…

Does anyone feel like taking up the challenge of making a similar map for their town or city?

[Egg Bramhill]

I would tend to use Flash for a project like this. You can control the bitmap loading time such as to give the visitor something to look at whilst the remainder of the bitmaps load. It's also a lot simpler to create the roll-over buttons to place the images and alter the image information.
I also skewed the map to ensure that vertical scrolling should not be needed. Whilst the map isn't orintated to North, it's still readable.
Unfinished example HERE

I think it would be possible to further reduce the map images down in size. It's the old problem of Flash using 72 dpi per inch as its format, so on import images have to be resized.
Egg

[This message was edited by Egg Bramhill on May 14, 2002 at 14:05.]