Image looks fuzzy on AOL

[Pretty_Girl]

Hi. I asked a question elsewhere yesterday and still no one seems to know the answer.
Here it is again.

"Hi all :) I am having trouble with a picture on my site. It's on my about page...or page 5. So far it comes in on Mozilla and Netscape. On AOL and Explorer though it comes in fuzzy. This is one of my biggest concerns on my site right now, there are others.... and all help would be appreciated :) Thanks in advance :)"

For more info. on my problem click here.
[webmasterworld.com...]

Please help if you can :) Thanks :)

[robotsdobetter]

On AOL they don't show web pages and images in full quality (It 9.0 users have the option to turn it off) for faster load time.

[Pretty_Girl]

Thanks, how come my other pictures on other pages come in fine?

[robotsdobetter]

I think after a picture passes so many bytes, it is than compressed to speed up the load time. Are these the same pictures on each web page?

[Pretty_Girl]

robotsdobetter,

OMG! I just checked them on the different browsers! You are so right. The bytes are bigger. So maybe if I put in the same pic. with a smaller size. Thank you so much, you are my hero! I've been trying to figure this out for about a month by myself. I love it here!

Thanks :)

[Pretty_Girl]

hmmmm....maybe I spoke too soon. It was a great idea, but it's back to fuzzy even with the smaller pic. Is there ANY way to fix this? If it's AOL how come my other pics. come in fine?

[PCInk]

AOL compress the info they send (so it appears to be slightly faster - particularly in the old days of dial-up). With pictures, this can even lead to a loss of quality.

There is little you can do other than to try and compress the pictures as much as you can before uploading them. This will probably make it difficult to compress any further and AOL will likely send the graphic as it is.

Try a graphics program or search for compression programs (some are online - though don't use AOL!).

AOL info for webmasters may be helpful to bookmark:
[webmaster.info.aol.com...]

[tedster]

AOl uses their own proprietary compression algorithm - it will mess with jpg, gif and png and sometimes in quite an ugly way. I've seen it add freckles to a 2-color gif!

Individual AOL users can turn off this compression by looking under "WWW option settings" on their account, but that only fixes it on their machine. Still, if you are building a website, doing this will show you whether the problem is actually the AOL compression or something else.