Internet Tips: Send Browser Pop-Ups to Their Deserved Demise

De-Fuzz AOL Graphics

Ever wonder why Web images viewed on America Online look blurrier or more distorted than they do over other Internet connections? To help pages load quickly over the modem connections most of its customers use, AOL automatically compresses standard .bmp, .gif, and .jpg images and converts them to the more compact Johnson-Grace format.

The loss in quality (compared with uncompressed images) is subtle but noticeable. Fortunately, however, you can turn off this default compression setting: Choose My AOL, Settings, Preferences, (Internet Properties) WWW, select the Web Graphics tab, click the Never compress graphics option, and then click OK (see Figure 2). To see the results of the change, you must first clear the browser's cache of compressed files: Select the General tab and click the Delete Files button.