Offer valid only through this banner
|
Offer valid only through this banner |
AOL has this bad reputation, so when something doesn't work and it's on AOL, it's obviously been caused by someone who didn't know what he was doing. This reputation is outdated. AOL has become a significantly faster, better, and more reliable network; in addition, the new pricing policies at most service providers, the availability of perfectly good computers at incredibly low prices, and the media hype surrounding how essential the internet is in today's world have combined to bring a tremendous influx of losers to the internet in general. AOL never had a monopoly on idiots, and their market share is steadily decreasing. In fact, more idiots sign onto standard ISPs these days than sign on to AOL, because everyone tells the world that if you sign on to AOL you must be an idiot. Even an idiot doesn't want people to think he's an idiot.
But this isn't really about AOL. It's about the rest of us. It's about a problem that we at Darklock Communications have explained repeatedly and often. A problem that can only be properly located and researched by someone on America Online. My screen name is CDarklock. I use America Online. I am neither afraid nor ashamed to admit it.
I'm going to tell a short story, to illustrate my point. Imagine, for a moment, that you've only just heard about the internet, and you've just come into possession of a new computer, and it has America Online installed. So you sign on. You like it. It's easy, it's fast enough, and really you don't get busy signals all that often when you consider how many users AOL has. You start to learn a little about the net, and you pick up on this thing called the web, and you look into HTML, and download some HTML editors from the file libraries. You start reading. You start experimenting.
Remember, you are not some idiot. You're actually pretty much like anyone else. Just not quite technically sophisticated yet... but getting there.
So you just created your first web page. You've spent days learning HTML, and over a week getting everything perfect. Not being an artist, you've gotten all your artwork from public image archives on the web, because really all the stuff AOL gives you to put on web pages is pretty stupid. Now it looks great. You tell all your friends on AOL. They all say it looks fantastic. You're very proud of yourself. So you post it in a newsgroup, or e-mail the URL to some other people, and suddenly someone tells you that none of the images load.
What happened?, you think, and you run straight to your web page. Everything is fine. Maybe it's me, you think, so you grab a couple people on AOL and ask them to look at it. They tell you it looks great. You get suspicious, thinking it's a prank, and you grab someone you don't know to get a truly objective opinion. He says something very rude and invites you to do something which in your experience is physically impossible, so you page a TOS advisor to report him and then go ask someone else you don't know, who tells you that the page looks great. You tell your friend it must be a problem on his end, because everything's fine over here.
Then you get a lot of very nasty mail from a variety of people who received forwarded copies of your mail saying everything was fine and it must be his problem. They call you a moron and an idiot and blame it all on America Online for signing up stupid people and letting them do things they have no business doing. So you go have a good cry and try to figure out what's wrong, and you don't know, and no one can tell you because it doesn't make any sense! It looks fine here, but all these people are calling you stupid because you can't tell the images are all corrupted, except they're not corrupted because you can see them just fine and so can all these other people! It's a plot, isn't it, all you internet geeks just want to drive the AOL people crazy, right?!
Wrong.
This problem stems from an effort by AOL to speed web transfers, conserve bandwidth, and provide better service to its customer base. I have to say first off that no one has done anything wrong. The majority of AOL users are probably not affected by it. However, web page development on AOL is complicated by this issue, and all web authors and developers should be made aware of it, as well as artists.
You're not crazy. You're not an idiot. You're not the victim of some cruel joke. You're just unaware of one option in AOL's web browser which is on by default, but nobody ever told you about. There's no telling how many people have been needlessly insulted and potentially traumatised over this.
In the AOL browser, there is an option to use "compressed" graphics. What this basically means is before the image is received by your web browser, AOL tries to compact it and make it smaller. The space savings is approximately 15% on the average, which is not significant to a single web user, but is very significant as a portion of AOL's combined network bandwidth.
When you save an image from the web, if you are using AOL's compressed graphics, that saved image is not actually the image you requested but the recompressed image you received. The distinction here is that you are saving the file with a name that indicates it is in GIF or JPEG format, but it is actually in a proprietary AOL format (probably some variant of the ART format). As a result, graphics programs will be unable to load it. (Update: since this problem was discovered, the AOL web browser under Win3x has begun reporting the file extension correctly as .ART on a save command, which is helpful to some but not exactly understandable to all.)
Since the file has been converted to .ART format (even if it's named differently), only the AOL web browser is able to view it. All other web browsers will be unable to interpret the file, and will display it as a broken image. The remedy for this situation is to go into the Preferences of the AOL web browser, and turn off the "Use Compressed Graphics" option. Following this, you must clear or "Purge" your web browser's cache, which is located under the "Advanced" options, and reload the current web page. After this, you will receive all images in the proper format and maintain compatibility with other browsers.After you do this, you must find good copies of all the pictures you've got on your page and upload them all again - I know this is a pain! But if you want the rest of the world to be able to see your images, it's something that is an absolute must. There are a couple of ways around this though - if you have a Paint program on your computer like Paint Shop Pro at http://www.jasc.com/psp.html - you can right-click on the pictures on your page, select "copy image" and then paste it into the paint program. Then simply resave it in .JPG or .GIF format, and reupload it into your web page directory.
You can also use the graphics utility built into the AOL client, but its conversion abilities are extremely limited and will not do .GIF images. You can go to File-->Open and open the file you wish to convert, then "Save as" the file to .JPG format. (Note: it also lets you save as .BMP format, but .BMP is not a format that shows up in regular web browsers. In this case, .JPG is the only viable option.) You can convert these files to .GIF in any external graphics program that supports the format.
Even if you don't have a web page, if you *ever* intend to save images off the internet, whether to edit them or look at them later or whatnot, you should turn off compressed images. If you do NOT plan to do this, then you will actually get a slight speed increase from leaving it on, but of course if you ever do start saving images from the web you'll need to do this.
You can always use a different browser (Netscape... use Netscape...) with your AOL connection, as well. Instructions are available for Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 from Netscape's web site. Microsoft Internet Explorer should automatically work over America Online, without any special setup. (Or at least, the default AOL browser *is* a version of MSIE, and I can't find any information on Microsoft's web site to indicate that there is anything in particular you need to do.)
My own recommendation for solving a lot of AOL problems you might have? America Online now offers a program called 'Bring Your Own Access'. This is a way to use another internet service provider of your choice to connect to AOL; with service provider fees dropping below $20 a month for unlimited access, you can get full direct internet (faster than AOL's internet link) *and* everything you currently get from AOL at a cost of only $30 a month or less. You will also be very likely to enjoy a faster connect speed, fewer busy signals, and quite possibly higher capabilities.
You will be able to use any program you want to send and receive internet mail, to read and post to newsgroups, and to handle all of the various functions AOL used to lock you into their product on. You won't lose any of your friends on AOL, and you won't have to give up any of the additional features of AOL like the channels menu and your buddies list. You can continue to use AOL and do things the way you always have, and pick up how to use other programs and internet services at your own pace, in your own time. In addition, you will be able to access IRC, MUDs, Ultima Online, Quake servers, and literally thousands of other things that you previously could not do on AOL -- and while some people say you can drop AOL after a while, I say WHY? AOL has a quick, easy, and friendly interface; it takes just about everything you might want and makes some of it easy to get to. The rest of the internet will let you get at the rest of the information available on it, but there are hundreds of things on America Online that either aren't available anywhere else or aren't as GOOD anywhere else. The file libraries alone are worth holding onto it for.
I'll conclude this by saying that AOL has its flaws. Every network does. But the summary dismissal of any AOL user as an idiot in the face of a serious and real technical difficulty is just unforgivable. Some of us really need to lighten up.
