Yes, it can be done without Flash but you don t need imagemaps at all. Just have a hover event fadeIn the correct image on the map, that s easy to do with jQuery. Something like this might work:
<ul class="region">
<li><a href="#" id="europe">Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#" id="asia">Asia</a></li>
<li><a href="#" id="africa">Africa</a></li>
<li><a href="#" id="australia">Australia</a></li>
</ul>
<div id="region-map">
<div id="region-overlay"></div>
</div>
And in CSS, you define the region-map
as having a background where no regions selected, and region-overlay
has different regions selected.
#region-map, #region-overlay {
width: 640px;
height: 320px;
}
#region-map {
background: url(map-base.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
}
#region-overlay.europe {
background: url(map-europe.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
}
#region-overlay.asia {
background: url(map-asia.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
}
#region-overlay.africa {
background: url(map-africa.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
}
#region-overlay.australia {
background: url(map-australia.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat;
}
And the jQuery code needed:
$(function() {
$( ul.region a ).hover(function() {
// Get the current region
var region = $(this).attr( id );
// Hide the current overlay, change it s map and change it back.
$( #region-overlay ).fadeOut(200, function() {
$(this).attr( class , region).fadeIn(200);
});
}, function() {
// Hide the overlay
$( #region-overlay ).fadeOut(200);
});
});
This isn t perfect but should get you started.
A working example can be found at:
http://www.ulmanen.fi/stuff/hovermap/