In contrast to IMG , FIG behaves as you would expect a figure to behave in a DTP application. Text flows around figures, they can have captions which stay with them, and copyright statements can be linked to the caption. This provides better maintainability and reduces network traffic by allowing re-use of basic images. 6.3.3 Active images in HTML 3.0 In HTML 3.0, imagemaps are handled differently. There are two tags for pictorial elements - IMG for small graphics that are part of one line of text, and FIG for larger figures around which text will flow.
Active images can continue to use IMG and pass links to the server for decoding.
However they may alternatively use the FIG element, so fully marked up hypertext can be used as an alternative for clients that do not display images. Typically this will have a menu of choices leading to the same places that using the active image would have done. This also provides enough information for the client to display a list of the possible URLs. In HTML 3.0, the shapes may optionally be given in abstract coordinates in the range 0 to 1, as an alternative to in pixel coordinates. Vector graphics may also be used, which are resolution independent.