America On Line is a very popular service for viewing the internet, but it poses several headaches for web designers. As a web user and consumer, you should be aware of some of these limitations. AOL's major problem deals with how it displays images; the default setting may over-compress the images on this website, making them somewhat blurry or pixelated. Fortunately, this is very easy to correct.

The following is a very short tutorial that will walk you through the several steps necessary for changing your graphics compression. This will improve the viewing of any website you visit. Of course you can avoid this altogether by launching a separate browser if you have one, such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox.

Here's the tutorial, as reproduced from the website at www.worldstart.com:

Tip #679 - Improve the Quality of Graphics in AOL

If you browse the web with AOL, you know that sometimes graphics just don't look so purdy. Never fear! I'm here to show you how to turn off the built in image compression.

AOL says this image compression helps images download faster. Blah! This may be, but a typical human can't see any significant difference in speed between having compression on vs off. In fact, the only thing this Image Compression seems to be good at is converting nice looking graphics and photos into something that appears to have gotten messed up in Captain Kirk's transporter. Sometimes it prevents server-based graphics from reaching you at all (ever wonder why you get red Xs all the time?)

I'll walk you through how to turn this off, but note that I'm using AOL 7.0. If you use AOL 6 (or even 5), there shouldn't be any major differences in the way this works. Newer AOL (8 and 9) work pretty much the same way.

1) Log On to AOL.

2) Go to Keyword: Preferences **See below for newer AOL instructions

3) Under the Organization Menu , click the Internet Properties WWW link . Your AOL Internet Properties Panel will pop up.

**With AOL 8 & 9 go to Settings/Preferences/Internet Settings

4) There are several tabs to choose from. Choose the Web Graphics Tab.

5) By default, Always Compress Graphics should be selected. If you enjoy crisp clear graphics, choose the Never Compress Graphics option.

6) Click " OK "

Congrats! Your graphics should be lookin' good from now on.

NOTE: Another benefit of choosing "Never Compress Graphics" is that you can save images from web pages as JPEG files rather than compressed AOL images (.art files) that few graphic programs can support.

For more detailed information on changing your AOL graphics compression setting, click here: http://www.pictureview.com/support2/aolartfiles.htm


One final note: After changing your setting, the effect won't be visible on the page you were last viewing or any other pages you may have visited before making the change. To correct this, try "reloading" or "refreshing" the page(s) in your browser. If this doesn't work, you'll have to empty the "cache," which is a file that your browser uses to store visited web pages. This is very easy to do, and directions can be found by using AOL's "Help" menu.

If all of this sounds like more trouble than it's worth, simply use a different browser. Your computer should have shipped with Internet Explorer (for Windows computers) or Safari (for Apple computers). If you don't have an alternate browser, consider downloading one from the internet; they're free!