[dpcan]

I remember seeing image maps for the first time as well. I can't remember exactly what they were for (possibly the Yahoo logo when it had circular buttons around it), but I distinctly remember the feeling of being able to click on an area of an image and something different happening.

It floored me at the time because it was, in my mind, when Dorothy opened the door to Oz and a huge, beautiful world just appeared before her.

It's very strange to be in an age group that gets to remember being in a world before and after image maps (among ALL the other tech that erupted in the last 30 years).

The best part of it is that as soon as we saw it.... we could reproduce it. I viewed-source and started creating my own image maps on my personal websites immediately. Then showed these to friends and family and they were so impressed :)

.... I find myself trying to recreate this feeling all the time.

[101008]

I couldn't agree more with your feelings, it was beautiful at the time. I remember I spent hours visiting websites with JS snippets, to do simple things, the web felt so much amateur and collaborative. Seeing it now through the times, I think the difference was that to create an amateur website, you don't need to understand a lot of techs, just HTML and how to use a FTP software. Now everything seems much more complex.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell my experience with Image Maps. A friend of mine had a much better CPU, where his father also worked creating websites, and he had Macromedia Dreamweaver. He could create image maps with the cursor, clicking here and there, and it was amazing. Meanwhile, in my house, my CPU only allowed me to run stuff like Notepad++, which meant I had to memorize my friend's code, running back home, start typing it and trying to understand how it worked to modify it at my piacere. The best feeling in the world was when the click did what I expected in the area I wanted. What a feeling.

[52-6F-62]

You still can go the route of not knowing a ton of tech to get a site up and running while still having full agency over the HTML/etc. Just pick up a service like bluehost shared. Hell, at work we even have one for odd tasks and easily-accessible FTP needs and one-off sites or documentation pages.

I do remember getting to play with Dreamweaver back then, though. It felt so high tech compared to Notepad and FrontPage Express and all that. All the "cool" sites had image maps and as a kid it was tough to understand how they worked. I did something similar to you, but usually copy and pasted from a web site then changed the image out and kept tweaking by trial-and-error until I got the result I wanted.

Nostalgia is a strong drug haha

[dehrmann]

Back in the day, finding good documentation was a lot harder. Not having MDN is a bigger deal than Dreamweaver vs. Notepad++.