Once you have selected your files, you can draw hot spots with the standard circle-, rectangle-, and polygon-outlining tools provided. You can assign a URL, a target, and alternate text to any hot spot from within a pop-up editing window. In addition, the program allows you to add points to any polygonal hot spot, but without any zooming tools, this feature is somewhat limited.

The program's test feature opens the same window used to assign URLs to hot spots, although it doesn't verify the information. Mapedit saves files as CERN, NSCA, and client-side HTML maps, and it generates all of the HTML code you'll need to use the new map on your Web site.

NOTE: Only the oldest browsers (before Netscape 2.0 etc.) require server-side image maps rather than client-side image maps.  Creating server-side imagemaps, which all web browsers understand, requires a real web server (not an FTP server) and a cooperative web server administrator. It is not usually as simple as wrapping a link around an IMG SRC tag and adding the ISMAP directive; the server must also be told about the map file, and the way to accomplish this varies from server to server. So read your server documentation, and don't waste time making maps before making sure you have the necessary tools to deliver them.