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Navigation bar in HTML - Image map & Division
Navigation is one of the most important elements in Web design. Web layouts do not have any specific physical representation that a user can depend on except for a consistent navigation menu. It is one of the most important design elements that provide users with a sense of orientation and guide them through the Website. Thus, it can be said that navigation is one segment of a Website's information architecture, but it plays an important role as it is the most visible segment to the end user.
In Web design, a navigation menu is always on navigation bars, which can be horizontal or vertical. A navigation bar is a section of a Website or online page intended to support visitors in browsing through an online document. Typically, Web pages will have a primary and a secondary navigation bar on all pages which will include links to the most important sections of the site.
1. Text-based Navigation Bar
The navigation menu is the most used element than any other element on any Web page. Therefore, it is important to make sure that Website visitors should be able to navigate through the site easily structure.
Some users browse Websites with graphics turned OFF or use browsers with minimal graphics capability. In such situations, it is essential to provide text-based navigation bars which are created as a stand-alone navigation bar. The developer in addition can also provide a graphical bar. Text-based navigation bars are not associated with icons, but are easy to create and can be displayed in any Web browser.
The advantage of using a text-based navigation bar is that it reduces a page's loading time. Although a text-based navigation bar is easy to create, it is not interesting because there is very little interaction and visual appeal for the visitor. Text links are hard to distinguish from regular text on a web page. It can be displayed either horizontally or vertically. The font (best to use Web safe fonts), color, and link colors can be determined by the user via the Font pane.
The HTML code for a text-based navigation bar.
2. Graphical Navigation Bar
The graphical navigation bar is more captivating than a text-based navigation bar as it uses icons. The usability of the page increases with a good choice of icons for the navigation bar. It can also make the Website more noticeable for users visiting the Website. In other words, the graphical navigation bar is better than text-based navigation as it gives visual appeal to visiting users. The only disadvantage is that, since it uses images, it takes longer time for a page to load. Also, the Web page will be useless for users using a non-graphic browser.
Graphical Navigation Bar with Rollover Effects
They are similar to the graphical navigation bar except for the additional feature. Moving the mouse over the linked image leads to a change in the state of the image. In other words, the state change of the image leads to an image-swapping process. When the mouse is moved off the image, the image swaps back to the previous view. This rollover effect creates an interactive activity between the Website and the visitor. This rollover effect has two different activities that include the image in the original view and the changed image after mouse rollover.
Note - The pre-load time of a Web page will increase if the rollover effect is used as all the images are required to be fully loaded on the Web page.
CSS and HTML code for a graphical navigation bar.
Image Map
Image maps are images with clickable areas. These areas in image maps when clicked will link to another page. The image maps have to be used intelligently to make them effective. If they are not used appropriately they can confuse users. The <map> tag is used to define an image map. The <map> element contains several <area> elements for defining clickable areas in the image map. In HTML5, if the ID attribute of the <map> tag is specified, then it must have the same value as the name attribute.
<map> tag attribute and its value.
- Name - mapname - It is used for specifying the name of an image-map
Follow these guidelines to create an image map:
- Use the <img> tag to insert a link to an image. In the <img> tag, use the use map attribute to define the image map name.
- Use the <map> tag to create a map with the same name. Inside this <map> tag, define the clickable areas with the <area> tag.
The use of image maps.
Divisions
The <div> tag defines a division on an HTML Web page. It is used to group block elements and format them with CSS. The new structural semantic tags reasonably reduce a lot of <div> tag's usage, but <div> tag is still important in the HTML5 world. The <div> tag can be used when there is no other semantically appropriate element left that suits the purpose of Web page development. It can be commonly used for stylistic purposes such as wrapping some semantically marked-up content in a CSS-styled container.
The HTML code shows the use of <div> tag used for wrapping.
Tips for using <div> tag in Website development are as follows:
- The <div> tag is a block-level element.
- The <div> tag can contain any other tag.
- In HTML5, the <div> tag can be found inside any element that can contain flow elements, such as other <div>, <address>, <section>, and <table>.
1. Division Positioning and Formatting
Elements can be positioned using the top, bottom, left, and right properties. However, these properties will not work unless the position of the property is set. They also work differently depending on the positioning method. There are five position properties in DIV elements namely static, relative, absolute, fixed, and inherited. For easy usage, only three properties are used namely absolute, relative, and fixed. Positioning can be applied to any block element. The default position for a block element (DIV) is static.
Various values can be used in the DIV element to position elements.
- Static: Positions elements are in order, as they appear in the document flow. It is the default value.
- Absolute: Positions the element relative to
- Fixed: Positions the element relative to the browser window.
- Relative: Positions the element relative to its normal position.
- Inherit: Positions the element concerning the value that is inherited from the parent element.
The CSS and HTML code for <div> tags with different position properties.
Multiple columns are created by using the <div> tag and CSS is used to format the divisions. Divisions can be formatted using the same character, paragraph, and page formatting styles.
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