<area>

The HTML <area> element defines a hot-spot region on an image, and optionally associates it with a hypertext link. This element is used only within a <map> element.

Attributes

This element's attributes include the global attributes.

alt

A text string alternative to display on browsers that do not display images. The text should be phrased so that it presents the user with the same kind of choice as the image would offer when displayed without the alternative text. This attribute is required only if the href attribute is used.

coords

A set of values specifying the coordinates of the hot-spot region. The number and meaning of the values depend upon the value specified for the shape attribute.

• rect or rectangle: the value is two x,y pairs: left, top, right, bottom.
• circle: the value is x,y,r where x,y is a pair specifying the center of the circle and r is a value for the radius.
• poly or polygon: the value is a set of x,y pairs for each point in the polygon: x1,y1,x2,y2,x3,y3, and so on.

The values are numbers of CSS pixels.

download

This attribute, if present, indicates that the author intends the hyperlink to be used for downloading a resource. See <a> for a full description of the download attribute.

href

The hyperlink target for the area. Its value is a valid URL. This attribute may be omitted; if so, the <area> element does not represent a hyperlink.

hreflang

Indicates the language of the linked resource. Allowed values are determined by BCP47. Use this attribute only if the href attribute is present.

ping

Contains a space-separated list of URLs to which, when the hyperlink is followed, POST requests with the body PING will be sent by the browser (in the background). Typically used for tracking.

referrerpolicy

A string indicating which referrer to use when fetching the resource:

• "no-referrer" meaning that the Referer: header will not be sent.
• "no-referrer-when-downgrade" meaning that no Referer: header will be sent when navigating to an origin without TLS (HTTPS). This is a user agent’s default behavior, if no policy is otherwise specified.
• "origin" meaning that the referrer will be the origin of the page, that is roughly the scheme, the host and the port.
• "origin-when-cross-origin" meaning that navigations to other origins will be limited to the scheme, the host and the port, while navigations on the same origin will include the referrer's path.
• "unsafe-url" meaning that the referrer will include the origin and the path (but not the fragment, password, or username). This case is unsafe because it can leak origins and paths from TLS-protected resources to insecure origins.

rel

For anchors containing the href attribute, this attribute specifies the relationship of the target object to the link object. The value is a space-separated list of link types values. The values and their semantics will be registered by some authority that might have meaning to the document author. The default relationship, if no other is given, is void. Use this attribute only if the href attribute is present.

shape

The shape of the associated hot spot. The specifications for HTML defines the values rect, which defines a rectangular region; circle, which defines a circular region; poly, which defines a polygon; and default, which indicates the entire region beyond any defined shapes.

Many browsers, notably Internet Explorer 4 and higher, support circ, polygon, and rectangle as valid values for shape, but these values are non-standard.

target

A keyword or author-defined name of the browsing context to display the linked resource.

The following keywords have special meanings:

• _self (default): Show the resource in the current browsing context.
• _blank: Show the resource in a new, unnamed browsing context.
• _parent: Show the resource in the parent browsing context of the current one, if the current page is inside a frame. If there is no parent, acts the same as _self.
• _top: Show the resource in the topmost browsing context (the browsing context that is an ancestor of the current one and has no parent). If there is no parent, acts the same as _self.

Use this attribute only if the href attribute is present.

Note: In newer browser versions (e.g. Firefox 79+) setting target="_blank" on <area> elements implicitly provides the same rel behavior as setting rel="noopener".

Deprecated attributes

name

Define a names for the clickable area so that it can be scripted by older browsers.

nohref

Indicates that no hyperlink exists for the associated area.

Note: Since HTML5, omitting the href attribute is sufficient.

tabindex

A numeric value specifying the position of the defined area in the browser tabbing order. This attribute is global in HTML5.

type

No effect. Browsers ignore it. (The W3C 5.3 fork of the HTML specification defines it as valid, but the canonical HTML specification doesn’t, and it has no effect in any user agents.)

Examples

<map name="primary">
  <area shape="circle" coords="75,75,75" href="left.html" alt="Click to go Left">
  <area shape="circle" coords="275,75,75" href="right.html" alt="Click to go Right">
</map>
<img usemap="#primary" src="https://udn.realityripple.com/samples/6a/7e559101b3.png" alt="350 x 150 pic">

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility