Re: image map traversal
Nick Arnett (narnett@Verity.COM)
Mon, 25 Mar 1996 09:48:00 -0800
>Hello,
>
>I previously asked the question: how can you retrieve an image map file from a
>web server? (the ascii file with the urls and coordinates). Someone answered
>that web servers do not allow you to retrieve this file. This leads me to
>wonder how a robot can descend the document tree of a web site if, as is the
>case for many sites, the path to lower level documents is through image maps
>and not through explicit hyperlinks?
I think you summarized the problem well and there's no obvious solution as
long as the image map is the only path by which one could reach some of the
documents. Not only robots would be affected, so would people using Lynx
or any other text-based browser, or those who didn't care to download the
image map. These are reasons that it is always a good idea to have a
text-only alternative page.
Nick