Each of ProMap's parameters is explained below, with reference to the clickable example code in the left frame: you can click a parameter from the example code to jump to its explanation, or simply read this page from top to toe. As you read, click the red references to other parameters to jump to them.

Most of ProMap's parameters have a default setting which is mentioned below. If the default setting is the option you'd like to use in your own implementation, you can leave that parameter out of your HTML code.

The 'Archive' attribute & 'CabBase' parameter
JAR (Java ARchive) and CAB (cabinet) files are archives containing Java class files in compressed form, making them easier to handle and quicker to download. Most modern browsers are able to read one or other of these formats, and the Archive attribute and CabBase parameter tell the browser the name of the archive file to open. The .JAR, .CAB and .CLASS files must all be in the same directory, and the CODEBASE= attribute is used in the normal way, if required, specifying the absolute or relative location of this directory. Older browsers that are unable to read either the JAR or the CAB file will instead read the loose CLASS files.

Applet Width & Height
Most of the time you'll set the applet's dimensions to exactly match those of your BaseImage. However, a useful feature of ProMap is its ability to display animated Messages within the applet, describing the link represented by a portion of the image, or perhaps describing the image itself. To create more space for these Messages, you can enlarge the applet dimensions as necessary - the image will automatically be centered within the applet. The area surrounding the image will be painted in your chosen BgColor.

NOTE:  If you follow the Testmode procedure to define your 'hotspots' and then alter the applet dimensions, your hotspots will no longer be matched to your image. This, of course, is because the image has been moved to keep it centered in your now resized applet. Ideally, try to judge the optimum applet size before defining the Areas, to save yourself doing the same job twice!

Copyright
This parameter must be included or the applet will not run, whether registered or unregistered. To prevent mistakes we recommend that you copy/paste it into your code from the Getting Started page: it is case-sensitive, single-spaced throughout and should appear on a single line. If there's a problem with this parameter, you'll see a status-bar message that reads "Copyright parameter missing or incorrect" which should lead you to the problem.

BgColor
Sets a background color (as a hex triplet) for the applet area you've defined in the applet tag. The default is FFFFFF (white). In most cases, this parameter can be ignored. The exception is when you choose to make the applet dimensions larger than the dimensions of your BaseImage. Because the image will be automatically centered within the applet, the BgColor will be visible around the image. In these cases, you'll probably want to make BgColor the same as your page's background color.

UseBorders
Draws a 3D border around each of your defined Areas using your chosen BorderColor. This can be used in conjunction with any other option such as filters and grayscaling. The two possible values are yes and no (not case-sensitive). The default is no.

BorderColor
A hex triplet to set the color of the 3D borders. Being a 3D effect, it's best to avoid black and white, or 'extreme' colors such as bright red (FF0000) so that the applet can derive lighter and darker shades for highlight and shadow. The default color is 999999 (gray). This parameter has no effect if UseBorders is set to 'no'.

If you'd prefer each Area's 3D border to be a different color, MatchColors lets you do so.

MatchColors
The value for this parameter overrides the setting of the BorderColor parameter, and takes either of two non-case-sensitive values: yes or no. The default is no. If you select yes, the 3D border around each Area will be painted in the corresponding MessageColor. For example, if MessageColor3 is set to mid-red (C00000), the 3D border around Area3 will be painted in the same color when the mouse enters that Area. To use this feature, UseBorders must be set to 'yes'. Because the default MessageColor is white, if an Area doesn't have a corresponding MessageColor parameter, its 3D border will be set to white.

Note that you don't have to set PaintMessages to 'yes' to use this parameter.

PaintMessages
Another non-case-sensitive yes or no parameter. If you choose yes, when the mouse enters an Area, the corresponding Message will be painted on top of the image, close to the selected Area. You can choose what color each message should be using the MessageColor parameters. If you choose no, the same Message will instead appear in the browser's status-bar. The default value for this parameter is yes.

AnimateMessages
Yet another yes or no parameter. If you choose yes, the Messages will appear in an animated fashion, one word at a time (either within the image or in the status-bar, depending on your setting for PaintMessages). Choose no to make the Messages appear in full immediately. The default value is yes.

Font
A comma-delimited string giving the name, style and size of the font you want to use for the Messages. The default settings are Dialog, plain, at size 12, which would be written as Dialog,plain,12. The three items must appear in the order name,style,size, and must be separated by commas. Note that the style part of this setting can be plain, bold, italic or bolditalic, and these are not case-sensitive.

UseHandCursor
A yes or no parameter that determines whether or not a typical 'web-style' hand cursor is used when the mouse moves inside an Area. The default value is yes, so you need include this parameter only if you want to set it to 'no' and stick to the default pointer. This feature is applied only when an applet is running in a Java 1.1-compatible browser (Internet Explorer 4x or higher, Netscape Navigator 4.07 or higher). In other browsers, this parameter is ignored and the default pointer will be used.

BaseImage
The name of the GIF or JPEG image file you want to use as the basis for your imagemap. This parameter works in the same way as the HTML <IMG SRC=""> tag: it might consist of just an image's filename if the image is in the current directory; it might be a relative path such as ../images/imagemap.gif; or it might be a URL such as http://www.server.com/folder/image.jpg. Ideally you should check the dimensions of this image, and set the applet's width and height to match.

Note that this parameter is vital: ProMap cannot run without this image loaded, so be sure to check the name and path (including case).

AltOverImage
You've seen by now that when the mouse enters an Area, that portion of the image is highlighted in some way. By including this parameter with a valid file name and/or path to another image, the same area of this second image will be shown instead (it's an Alternative Image for mouseOver). Ideally this second image should have the same dimensions as your main BaseImage. You can apply effects and filters (such as UseFilters, GrayscaleAreas, FilterEdges and FilterPercent) and ProMap will treat this second image just as it would treat the BaseImage. If this parameter is not included, the BaseImage will be used instead.

AltDownImage
This works in exactly the same way as AltOverImage, with the sole exception that a portion of this image will be used when the mouse clicks inside an Area. If this parameter is not included, the BaseImage will be used instead.

GrayscaleBaseImage
A non-case-sensitive yes or no according to whether you want ProMap to grayscale your BaseImage before displaying it. The default is no. Note that applying the grayscale filter to a large image will make the applet take considerably longer to load.

GrayscaleAreas
It's yes or no again, this time to whether you want the defined Areas of the image to appear grayscaled when the mouse enters or clicks them. This option can be used in conjunction with UseFilters or alone, and will be applied to your AltOverImage and/or AltDownImage if you've chosen to use these. The default setting is no.

UseFilters
A final yes or no parameter according to whether or not you want the color filters to be applied to the defined Areas of the image when the mouse enters or clicks them. This option can be used in conjunction with GrayscaleAreas or alone, and will be applied to your AltOverImage and/or AltDownImage if you've chosen to use these. The default setting is yes. You can adjust the intensity of the filter and the width of the edges for each Area using the FilterPercent and FilterEdges parameters.

Area1, Area2, . . . Area50
The fundamental parameters for an imagemap: the coordinates of the rectangular portions of the image you want to define as 'live'. The values for these parameters will be four figures separated by commas: the first pair of figures represent the x,y top left point of an area (where x is distance across and y is distance down); the second pair represent the bottom right point of the area. For example, 0,0,50,20 defines an area that starts in the extreme top left corner of the applet and stretches across 50 pixels and down 20. Provided your applet is reasonably large (about 260x50 minimum), Testmode provides an easy interactive way to determine coordinates.

You can define up to 50 different Areas. As all Americans know, there is no Area51 ;-)

In order to run, ProMap must have one or more Area parameters defined, and one of these must be named Area1.

Areas can overlap, but only one area will ever be 'active' at any time, even if the mouse is on a point where two Areas intersect. However, if one Area is completely covered by another, it will be impossible to select it or to follow the URL it points to.

FilterPercent1, FilterPercent2, . . . FilterPercent50
Allows you to choose the depth of the color filters applied to the correspondingly-numbered Area, taking an integer as a value. This means that you can choose different depths of filter for different Areas of your BaseImage. The default setting is 15. Raising this figure will result in a brighter image for mouseOver, and a darker image for mouseDown (click). Lowering the figure will make the filtering effect less pronounced. A setting of 0 is valid, and results in an unfiltered image.

For these parameters to have any effect, UseFilters must be set to 'yes' (the default). If you've opted to use an AltOverImage and/or an AltDownImage, the filter setting for the Area will be applied to these.

FilterEdges1, FilterEdges2, . . . FilterEdges50
Lets you choose the width of the bevelled edge for the correspondingly-numbered Area, taking an integer as a value. The default is 5. For large Areas you might want to raise this value to make the edge more noticeable; for smaller Areas you might want to lower it. Setting the value to 0 removes the bevelled edges entirely. You can create some weird effects by choosing very high values too!

For these parameters to have any effect, UseFilters must be set to 'yes' (the default). If you've opted to use an AltOverImage and/or an AltDownImage, the filter setting for the Area will be applied to these.

Message1, Message2, . . . Message50
An optional text message that will appear when the mouse moves inside the correspondingly-numbered Area. Exactly how the message is displayed depends on your choice of settings for PaintMessages and MessageColor. The default message is no message: if you'd prefer to have no messages displayed for an area, either leave its Message parameter out, or include it with nothing between the double quotes (value="").

MessageColor1, MessageColor2, . . . MessageColor50
Allows you to specify a color (as a hex triplet) in which the correspondingly-numbered Messages will be painted. The default is FFFFFF (white), which will be used for any Message without a corresponding MessageColor parameter. For these parameters to have any effect on the Messages, PaintMessages must be set to 'yes'.

These parameters have a secondary use: if you've opted to display a 3D border around your defined Areas, you can switch on MatchColors to have the border of each Area painted a custom color.

DefaultSounds
Defines two audio files that will be played when the mouse enters or clicks any defined Area of the applet. The paths to these two files may be defined as either absolute or relative URLs (as with all of ProMap's image parameters). The first refers to the mouseOver sound, the second to the mouseDown sound, and they must be separated by a comma. In the example parameter to the left, in.au will play when the mouse enters any Area, and hit.au will play when an Area is clicked.

Using this parameter with none of the Sounds parameters (below), these sounds will be applied to every Area. If you'd prefer to play only an 'over' sound or only a 'down' sound, only include the path to a single file, and make sure the comma is placed before or after it as appropriate. For example, to have a sound played only when an Area is clicked, you'd use the following parameter:

<param name=DefaultSounds value=",Out.au">

Sounds1, Sounds2, . . . Sounds50
These parameters override the settings of the DefaultSounds parameter. If a param name=Sounds31 parameter exists, for example, the sound files it specifies will be used for that Area. In the same way as the DefaultSounds parameter, if you only want to have a single sound played for a particular Area, enter the path/filename and place the comma in the appropriate position (as shown in the Sounds1 and Sounds2 parameters to the left. The Sounds3 parameter shown will play sounds for both mouseOver and mouseDown for Area3. There is no Sounds4 parameter, although four Areas have been defined, so Area4 will use whatever the DefaultSounds parameter specifies.

URL1, URL2, . . . URL50
This is the functional side of the imagemap: when a particular Area is clicked, you want it to link to a particular web page or file. In fact, ProMap can open up to four separate URLs when an Area is clicked! Therefore, along with the usual numerical addition that matches the URL parameter to its corresponding Area number, there are also the letters a, b, c and d tagged onto the end. Each of these can take an absolute or relative URL. In the example parameters to the left, you can see that all four URL1 parameters have been used: when Area1 is clicked, these four HTML documents will be fetched. For Area4, two URL4 parameters are included so that a click on Area4 will open two pages. Areas 2 and 3 will fetch single pages when clicked.

There are two points to bear in mind about this. First, the URLs will be fetched one at a time (although they should appear almost simultaneous) in the abcd order. This leads to the second point: if one of those URLs will load a page over the top of the applet, the applet must stop running. Therefore, if you're trying to load 4 pages, using all four URL parameters, and your URL2b parameter is the one that loads over the applet, the URL2c and URL2d links won't work - the applet stops running before it can process the requests!

As an aid to testing, either prefix or replace your URLs with a dollar sign ($). You can then click the applet without error messages appearing or being linked elsewhere.

Target1, Target2, . . . Target50
Allows you to specify a frame- or window-name into which each of the URL links should be opened. Once again, the number after 'Target' corresponds with an Area number, and the a,b,c,d additions correspond with the URL parameters. If a URL parameter exists and has no corresponding Target parameter, the target will default to "_self".

Remember that frame names are case-sensitive. If you're trying to make something open in a frame and your browser persists in opening a new window for it instead, check that the case and spelling of the name match in the Target parameter and in your HTML <frameset> tag.


































.