My web dev experience began right before ES6, when browsers still did not do parallel asset loads and so spritesheets were common

Why could you not have defined elements overlayed using high z index that were clickable, like invisible divs?

▲ jgraham an hour ago | parent [-]

Server side image maps predate javascript. They were in early versions of Mosaic.

Client side image maps and the script element were (AFAICT) both introduced in Netscape 2.

Even when scripting was introduced, you didn't necessarily have the ability to move elements around freely on the page. I think (but I'm not certain) that it wasn't until Netscape 4 era that you had enough layout primitives to implement the multi-layer positioning approach to custom clickable areas.

	▲	gavinray 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		With plain HTML you could have done this, though? `<div class="image-map"> <img src="funnycats.jpg"> <a href="cats.html" style="position:absolute; background: transparent; left: 8.5%; top: 12.5%; width: 59%; height: 87%;" ></a> </div>`