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I have found that you must use a minimum of 64 colors (128 is better) in .gifs and make all of your graduated (or fading) colors .jpegs. This will minimize the effects but you're still gonna see some artifacting that really isn't there.
I feel so sorry for all the new people who think AOL is the internet, and why do all these webmasters have no taste?
Thanks for pinning that one down. I never understood why my 8-color text graphics got the measles!
Do you need to actually USE all the colors, or is just having a big palette all it takes?
Ah! Another Kilobyte/crusher out there. I'm not sure exactly why it does what it does....even when you use 1 or 2 colors in a text graphic you still will see distortions...usually in the form of stripes in the background of that slice.
I've found that using 128 color palettes will eliminate most of the problems and by using only 1 or 2 of the colors with modest anti-aliasing you can minimize file size as well. Color graduations will not work well as a gif in AOL with less than 128 colors.
Normally, I build the graphics on a document size canvas in FW and then slice it up into gifs and jpgs according to text and pictures, drop shadows, etc. This makes for some complicated table structures but since FW is writing the code I just copy and paste and then pull out all the spacers and comments. I usually float the text in a div tag anyway so text positioning is simple and not really a concern for the table structure.
Try using 128 color palettes for gifs and jpgs for all the pics and color graduations and see if it makes a difference.
sidenote: only the AOL browser is affected, if you are connected through AOL and using a different browser, the other browser shouldn't be affected by the image compression.
Yes, I get that too, and it seems totally bizarre. How much more compression can you get than 2-color LZW?
If I understand this coorectly, this "extra special" compression only happens to images that are stored/cached by AOL. Is there a way to force the image call to go to my server?
America Online users: If the graphics on this or any other web page on the Internet appear distorted, follow the steps described below to optimize your browser for viewing web pages.
1) Click on the "My AOL" icon at the top center of your browser
2) Choose "Preferences" from the drop-down menu
3) Click on the "WWW" button
4) Select the "Web Graphics" tab (4th tab from the left)
5) Make sure that the "Use compressed graphics" field is NOT checked
The following is a verbatim excerpt from the America Online FAQ for webmasters (http://webmaster.info.aol.com).
Q. Why do my images look more blurry on AOL's Browser and why do some have black bars on them?
A. America Online utilizes graphics compression software that speeds up the delivery of web pages to its members by compressing images and various multimedia applications. Images that are .BMP, .GIF, or .JPG are converted into the proprietary Johnson-Grace image format .ART. All AOL members have the
option of deselecting "Used Compressed Graphics" in their Web Preferences.
Q. OK, I have deselected "Use Compressed Graphics" in my WWW preferences and the images still look the same! What am I doing wrong?
A. 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 web site.
