Rollovers

Hello,

I have a B&W map of the U.S.; I need to create coloured rollovers that will link to individual pages. I already coloured my 50 images for each state. What is the best way to achieve this? I know I could use hotspots to create the link but how do I display the coloured image?

Thank you for any help.

Sue

Hi Sue,

Well, the traditional approach to rollovers like this is to us ethis approach, using javascript:
http://www.elated.com/tutorials/graphics/photoshop/rollover_menu/

This basically replaces one image with another. Sadly, in web pages, images have to be square, and US states are anything but. Your options I think are:
1) Image map. Theoretically, since an image map can have irregular shapes you could combine that with the approach above, but you'd be replacing the *whole* map each time, which is likely to be impractical.
2) Do it in Flash. This would be my approach, since you can have irregular shaped buttons, and the effects you can achieve are nicer too.

Hope that helps,

Simon
ELATED : )

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Hi Simon,

Thanks for replying. I've decided to go forward using Fireworks - I had exposure to this program briefly for rollover buttons. Everything is going great but the program is freezing when I try to export. I have all 50 states sliced, rollover images ready, links to html pages done. I was able to preview without problems up to about state 10, then went full speed to complete this. Now my program stops responding. I can't reach any support from Macromedia/Adobe. I loaded everything up onto another computer and have the same results. I'm so close to finishing !!!!!!! Do you have any clue why this now won't go?

Hi Sue,

Hmm.. I'm afraid I don't know fireworks very well, and this sounds like a quirk of that file, since you've tried in on two machines.

My advice would simply be to start again, work up to your initial ten states, make sure that works, save a copy, then keep going til it breaks (if it does). Pay close attention to what you're doing at each state so that if/when you get tech support you'll be able to tell them something meaningful.

Essentially it sounds like you need to sort the issue out before you can rely on it for production work.

Simon
ELATED : )

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http://www.PageKits.com
Professional Website Templates