The area object reflects the area element, which defines the shape, coordinates, and destination of a clickable region of a client-side image map. Navigator and Internet Explorer treat an area object as a member of the links collection, since an area object behaves much like a link, but for a segment of an image.

Future nongraphical browsers may use the alt property setting to display a brief description of the meaning of the (invisible) image's hotspots.

Removes focus from the current object, at which time the object's onblur event fires. Note that the range of elements capable of focus and blur (both the event and method) is limited in all browsers except for more recent versions of IE (see the shared tabindex attribute in Chapter 8). Most reliably for backward compatibility, apply the blur( ) method to blatantly focusable elements, such as text input and textarea elements. Assigning the attribute onfocus="this.blur( );" to a text input element, for instance, is a crude but effective backward-compatible way to largely disable a field for browsers that do not provide genuine element disabling.

Defines the outline of the area to be associated with a particular link or scripted action. Coordinate values are entered as a comma-delimited list. If hotspots of two areas should overlap, the area that is defined earlier in the code takes precedence.

Gives focus from the current object, at which time the object's onfocus event fires. Note that the range of elements capable of focus and blur (both the event and method) is limited in all browsers except for more recent versions of IE (see the shared tabindex attribute in Chapter 8). Most reliably for backward compatibility, apply the focus( ) method to blatantly focusable elements, such as text input and textarea elements.

This is that portion of the href attribute's URL following the # symbol, referring to an anchor location in a document. Do not include the # symbol when setting the property.

Provides the combination of the hostname and port (if any) of the server of the destination document for the area link. If the port is explicitly part of the URL, the hostname and port are separated by a colon, just as they are in the URL. If the port number is not specified in an HTTP URL for IE, it automatically returns the default, port 80.

Provides the hostname of the server (i.e., a two-dot address consisting of server name and domain) of the destination document for the area link. The hostname property does not include the port number.

This is the URL specified by the element's href attribute.

Specifies whether the area defined by the coordinates has a link associated with it. When you set this property to true, scriptable browsers no longer treat the element as a link.

Provides the pathname component of the URL assigned to the element's href attribute. This consists of all URL information following the last character of the domain name, including the initial forward slash symbol.

Provides the port component of the URL assigned to the element's href attribute. This consists of all URL information following the colon after the last character of the domain name. The colon is not part of the port property value.

Indicates the protocol component of the URL assigned to the element's href attribute. This consists of all URL information up to and including the first colon of a URL. Typical values are "http:", "file:", "ftp:", and "mailto:".

This is the URL-encoded portion of a URL assigned to the href attribute that begins with the ? symbol. A document that is served up as the result of the search also may have the search portion available as part of the window.location property. You can modify this property with a script. Doing so sends the URL and search criteria to the server. You must know the format of data (usually name/value pairs) expected by the server to perform this properly.

Indicates the shape of a server-side image map area with coordinates that are specified with the coords attribute.

This is a number that indicates the sequence of this element within the tabbing order of all focusable elements in the document. Tabbing order follows a strict set of rules. Elements that have values other than zero assigned to their tabIndex properties are first in line when a user starts tabbing in a page. Focus starts with the element with the lowest tabIndex value and proceeds in order to the highest value, regardless of physical location on the page or in the document. If two elements have the same tabIndex values, the element that comes earlier in the document receives focus first. Next come all elements that either don't support the tabIndex property or have the value set to zero. These elements receive focus in the order in which they appear in the document.

This is the name of the window or frame that is to receive content as the result of navigating to an area link. Such names are assigned to frames by the frame element's name attribute; for subwindows, the name is assigned via the second parameter of the window.open( ) method. If you need the services of a target attribute to open a linked page in a blank browser window and you also need the HTML to validate under strict HTML or XHTML DTDs, you can omit the target attribute in the code, but assign a value to the area element's target property by script after the page loads.