(By the way, welcome to the forum)
When you select an image and then Insert Image Map/shape, the
cursor should instantly turn into crosshairs -- but you won't see
them until you hover the cursor over the image.
When you draw the image map, RH has to open the hyperlink
dialog. I have seen this take awhile when the topic directory
folder structure is complex, and/or the project has many topics. RH
has to compile the list before it can let you do the next step.
Is there something going on in the background that might eat
up processing time when RH is compiling the topic list?
Another slowdown in compiling the topic list here (and in
other tasks) can be caused by filenames with spaces or special
characters. Windows doesn't mind, and IE may not complain, but RH
and many other HTML application choke on nonstandard file names.
Standard means, to me, using alphanumerics and occasionally a -
hyphen - or _underscore_ . A double.dot.htm file name is especially
troublesome in this regard.
Harvey