AOL Compression Woes

If you are an AOL user, you should be advised that AOL, in its never-ending attempt to isolate you from the real Internet and reduce its own costs, automatically compresses images that you view on Web sites that you visit with your AOL browser. This compression can dramatically reduce the quality of the images you see, making them look far fuzzier than they actually are; and it can also distort the proportions of the image (because AOL also tries to force the image to fit in 640x480 pixels, even if that isn’t the correct size).

Needless to say, if you are viewing images on my site in my various photo and wallpaper galleries, this AOL-specific mangling of the images means that you may be seeing pictures that look far worse on your browser than they do to other visitors. In order to see images in all their glory, on my site and elsewhere, you have two options: (1) use a different browser (i.e. any browser other than the standard AOL browser; or (2) follow the instructions below to disable image compression, so that you receive images exactly as they are intended to look:

1. Click on My AOL at the top of your screen.
2. Click on Preferences.
3. Click on the icon that has a W in it and WWW beneath it.
4. Click on the Web Graphics tab.
5. Uncheck the box marked Use compressed graphics (if it is already unchecked, leave it that way).

Cool Wallpaper