Joomla! 2.5: Free Image Map Now Available (And How To Install It).

Hello, when you are committed to web develop a new web site there are some basic features you may not to miss. One of them is the one that let you add with ease URLs to more than one area of your image; that is the image map or image mapping feature. With this article I let all of the Joomla! 2.5 users know on the recent availability (thanks to my kind request to Mr. Paul FRANKLIN) of the image map feature by adding the image map plugin in the JCK Editor Manager.  One common limitation for this feature for both: Wordpress and Joomla! is that it does not work with the Chrome browser!

Image Map CMS Overview

Wordpress

In Wordpress is available a great content editor plugin, I guess the more used and well known: Ultimate tinyMCE: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ultimate-tinymce/. It is free it and provides the image map button:

Below the settings page:

 Here is how to use it:

Joomla! 1.5

If you are a Joomla!nian the “thing” become a little difficult. We have now to consider Joomla! 1.5 and Joomla! 2.5. For the earlier version - that still offers a greater numbers of free extensions, if compared to the 2.5 one, capable of fulfill all of your needs – there is this set up guide (tested with Joomla 1.5.12 and JoomlaFCK 2.6.4.1.):

1. download the FCKeditor from: http://www.joomlafckeditor.com/downloads.
2. place the imgmap plugin into {joomla}\plugins\editors\fckeditor\editor\plugins
3. in {joomla}\plugins\editors\fckeditor\fckconfig.js somewhere at the end of the file add: FCKConfig.Plugins.Add( 'imgmap', 'en') ;
4. in {joomla}\plugins\editors\fckeditor\editor\jtoolbarsetconfig.xml you will find the toolbar sets (Advanced/Creative/Blog/Default). Locate: <plugin name="Image" acl="*"/> in the toolbarset you want to use, and add: <plugin name="imgmapPopup" acl="*"/>

Before to launch the editor do the following: go to the page of the plugin “Editor – JoomlaFCK” settings, and change the skin from: Office2007 to default:

otherwise you’ll see only a missing icon.

Finally, clear your browser cache and launch article editor. You should see the imgmap icon next to the image icon.

Joomla! 2.5

When I tried to web search for finding the image map for Joomla! 2.5 I was surprised there was nothing! Only commercial plugin/add on. My first workaround was: I create the article withthe image map in my local Joomla! 1.5 with FCKeditor then I edited it for being published in Joomla! 2.5 (it is about changing the address of the image in the Joomla! 1.5 HTML generated code to the Joomla! 2.5).   Since the only working free plugin for Joomla! seemed to be the one of the FCKeditor I went to its web site to try to post a feedback in the forum for underline the need to provide the first Joomla! 2.5 free plugin! With my great surprise I received the plugin from: Mr. Paul FRANKLIN.

Here my post: http://www.joomlackeditor.com/forum/37-general-questions/5089-i-did-not-find-any-image-mapping-feature#5133
Once again I remember you this is tested on Firefox 20; it does not work on Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 10!

      

In order to use it: 
1. download plg_jckeditor5.2_stable.zip here: http://www.joomlackeditor.com/downloads/viewdownload/42-version-52-stable/88-plgjckeditor52stablezip and install it;
2. then download and install JCK Editor Manager [Lite Edition] v. 4.7: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/834478/com_j25_jckman_light.47.zip
3.   finally download and install the  image map plugin: http://www.joomlackeditor.com/images/fbfiles/files/imgmap.zip  Here is the link on how to install a JCK Editor plugin: http://www.joomlackeditor.com/installation-guide?start=16