I couldn't agree more with your feelings, it was beautiful at the time. I remember I spent hours visiting websites with JS snippets, to do simple things, the web felt so much amateur and collaborative. Seeing it now through the times, I think the difference was that to create an amateur website, you don't need to understand a lot of techs, just HTML and how to use a FTP software. Now everything seems much more complex.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell my experience with Image Maps. A friend of mine had a much better CPU, where his father also worked creating websites, and he had Macromedia Dreamweaver. He could create image maps with the cursor, clicking here and there, and it was amazing. Meanwhile, in my house, my CPU only allowed me to run stuff like Notepad++, which meant I had to memorize my friend's code, running back home, start typing it and trying to understand how it worked to modify it at my piacere. The best feeling in the world was when the click did what I expected in the area I wanted. What a feeling.