If images on web pages (ours and others) appear blurred, in strange colors or of generally poor quality, here is helpful information to correct the problem. Images appear this way when viewed from AOL's built-in browser but appear fine when viewed from any other browser.

This problem most of the time is the result of an easily corrected setting within the AOL software. By unchecking one small check-box should clear up the problem.

Please follow these instructions:
1: Click on the "My AOL" icon in the AOL Toolbar at the top of your page.

2: Choose the word "Preferences" from the drop down list that appears.

3: The Preference window will appear showing icons for various aspects of your AOL software. Click on the icon labeled "WWW". This willa window titled "Internet Options".

4: From the top of the Internet Options window, click on the "Web Graphics" tab. This will show an AOL logo, followed by the words "Do you want Web Graphics to be compressed?" and a check-box titled "Use Compressed Graphics".

5: Uncheck the "Used Compressed Graphics" check-box and then click "OK" at the bottom of the window. That's it!

The next time that you restart your AOL software, your WWW images should appear clear and sharp, as they were intended.

Question. OK, I have deselected "Use Compressed Graphics" in my WWW preferences and the images still look the same! What am I doing wrong?

Answer. This is a Caching issue. In your WWW preferences you can set your history to "0" pages and clear the History. You must also delete the files in your Temporary Internet Files folder.

Holding down the "Control" key on your keyboard and simultaneously mouse-clicking on the Browser Reload icon while the browser window is active will also clear your proxy cache and display the latest data from the website.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Web Graphics window that contains the use compressed graphics check-box states that using this option will "display web pages quicker". This is somewhat of a deceiving statement. If you are viewing web pages that contain uncompressed graphics to begin with, then it's true that this option will speed up your web viewing. The truth of the matter is that now, nearly all websites use images that are already compressed in either the gif, jpeg, or png formats. Choosing the "use compressed graphics" option will only convert these compressed images into a different compression format, and doing this will result in a severe loss of quality without any gain in speed.

We hope this information is helpful to you.

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