If the browser does not support ismap then the query string must not be added to the anchor URL and the server should respond appropriately (for example, by returning a text-only navigation page).
A more recent approach is to overlay links on an image using CSS absolute positioning; however, this only supports rectangular clickable areas.
Examples of these applications are Adobe's Dreamweaver or KImageMapEditor (for KDE), and the imagemap plugin found in GIMP.
The free and open-source office suite LibreOffice also includes a dedicated ImageMap editor.
[4] Image maps which do not make their clickable areas obvious risk subjecting the user to mystery meat navigation.