illustrator map to imagemap automatically? or is there a better way?

Question

I have a vector illustrator file with all the counties of California as distinct paths. I need to have these counties be links to other pages online. is there a way to automatically generate an HTML imagemap from this file? illustrator provides an export as a jpg function that has options for polygonal imagemap shapes, but it isn't working.

alternatively, do you have an opinion about the usage these days of imagemaps at all and whether I should approach this another way?

yes, I know I could do this in flash but I want to avoid that.

thanks!

Answer 1

Ah, I was looking for this very solution, and thanks to LHMathies' answer above, and ryandoss's tips, I worked out a complete mini-tutorial, which I put in this other SO thread.

I was able to create an imagemap from a Photoshop file in just a few minutes.