About hot spots and image maps

A hot spot is an invisible region on a graphic to which you have assigned a hyperlink. A text hot spot is a string of text that you have placed on a graphic and assigned a hyperlink. When a site visitor clicks the region or the text, the destination of the hyperlink is displayed in a Web browser. In Microsoft FrontPage, hot spots can be shaped as rectangles , circles , or polygons .

A graphic with one or more hot spots is called an image map. The image map usually gives cues about where you should click.

For example, you have a Web page about your company. On this Web page is a graphic of your product that contains a hot spot for each particular aspect of that product. When the site visitor clicks an area of the product, a page is displayed describing that aspect of the product in detail.

The difference between an image map and a graphic with a default hyperlink

You can also define a default hyperlink for a graphic rather than create a hot spot on it. For example, when you want to create a button that is linked to your home page, you can define a default hyperlink that goes to a specific destination instead of drawing a hot spot around the entire button. The areas of the graphic that don't have hot spots can be assigned a default hyperlink; when the user clicks anywhere outside a hot spot, she will be directed to the destination you set for the graphic's default hyperlink.