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WELCOME AMERICA ON-LINE USER! Please read the following information before proceeding to the Main Page.
Because you are using America On-Line (AOL), the graphics and photographs on this website will probably look blurry to you. Look at the background of this web page. Can you see a pattern of leaves and stems? Or does it look like a green blur? If it does look blurry, then read the following information to adjust your AOL preferences so that you can enjoy this and all other websites on the internet with perfect clarity—and it takes 15 seconds to adjust.
You're probably one of the 18 million AOL users that does not realize that AOL software automatically compresses image data and will distort many images and photographs, causing these images or photographs to look blurry or have black lines in them. AOL software is unusual compared to all other browsers (like Netscape or Internet Explorer) included with other more standard internet services (like AT&T or Cyberhighway). AOL thinks it is doing its users a favor by compressing images automatically to speed downloading time.
The actual result is that the AOL software adjusts images and photographs only to a predefined set of 256 unique colors. Any images with more than the 256 colors in the AOL palette get blurred or blackened. In short, AOL users do not see the internet as clearly as the rest of the internet community. And, there is only a very minor decrease in image downloading time (AOL image compression might save the user a quarter of a second in downloading an image that normally requires 20 seconds).
Even worse, once you're logged on through AOL, it doesn't matter whether you use the AOL browser, Internet Explorer, or any other browser on your computer. They will all receive AOL compressed images.
If you want to see the internet with perfect clarity—like the rest of the internet community—you only need to do two simple things (this will improve your view of THOUSANDS of websites): 1) Turn off the image compressor in your preferences. 2) Clear your cache so that all of the compressed images already on your hard drive will be erased, so that you can download new, clearer images from websites you've already visited. Follow these simple steps and in 15 seconds, you can enjoy the internet just like every other internet user around the world:
TO TURN OFF IMAGE COMPRESSION: Once you've logged on to AOL, and the AOL screen is loaded (the one with all the options like e-mail, travel, news, etc.) follow these steps: 1) click on either "My AOL" or "Members" ("My AOL" is probably the better choice if you have a fairly recent version of AOL software). 2) click on "Preferences" 3) click on "WWW" 4) deselect the image compression option by clicking on the box (uncheck) where it says something like, "Do you want compressed images for faster downloading?" However it says it, the answer is NO. Make sure your image compression option is TURNED OFF. 5) That's it! Go to the second task below.
TO CLEAR YOUR INTERNET IMAGE CACHE: This is important to do because your computer, when downloading images from the internet, saves the images in a temporary file called a "cache." That's why when you hit the "back" button on your browser, all of the images fill in so much faster. Your browser is reading them from your hard drive instead of waiting for them to download from the internet again. To clear your cache of AOL compressed images, follow these steps (Macintosh users should consult their users manual to find these files): 1) click the "Start" button 2) choose "Settings" 3) choose "Control Panel" 4) click the icon "Internet" (it's probably a little blue "e" with a hammer and wrench) 5) in the "General" tab (which is probably the tab it opens with), look for the area which says "Temporary internet files" and click the button that says "delete files." 6) when the next screen comes up, choose "OK." This will NOT erase stored e-mail messages, bookmarks, or address lists. 7) That's it! You are now ready to view the world-wide web like the rest of the internet community.
Note: if your AOL software is configured to save the "cache" files in another directory, and you still see blurry images, hit the "Reload" button when visiting a website page that you've already been to. If you still have trouble, contact your AOL technical support via their website: http://www.aol.com