1.4.1. Interactive Maps

Interactive maps are multimedia maps you can interact with. The presented mouse and keyboard interactivities that were presented in chapter Interactivity in General can all be implemented into multimedia maps:

Mouseclick

Please click on the selection list to be able to choose a state. With a second click in the selection list you can choose the state itself.

Click and Drag

You can drag and drop the blue rectangle in the reference map to change the map segment. The zoom slider as well is a click and drag element. The zoom in and out buttons are only click elements.

Rollover

Each county is highlighted when you roll the mouse over it. At the same time, the name of the county is extracted and shown.

A further possibility would be the presentation of the country name via tooltip next to the mouse cursor.

The presented interactivities are all on the client-side. But often, interactive maps have implemented both, client-side and server-side interactivities.

Often animated maps contain interactivity, since - as you learned in this lesson - it is recommended to let the user control the animation with buttons such as play, stop and pause (see Self Assessment of unit 1.2). Using these buttons means to interact with the map.