AOL is not the way most Internet surfers view the Internet. AOL has decided that it will make decisions on it's own that do not meet the standards set by the internet community worldwide. Around 90% of surfers to my servers are not aol surfers. 90% of surfers are viewing your pictures and web pages the way they were designed by my staff.

 

 

While it is not Captain Jack's problem to fix AOL's problems, since 10% of the surfers are from AOL, I have set up this page to help guide you.

 

 

Images that look great on normal browser and bad on AOL

 

Compression (of JPEG files which display pictures) works well. It reduces the size of the files and thus speeds the downloading of them to your computer. And, up to a certain amount of compression, there is virtually no degradation of the image displayed on your screen. Webmasters compress your images so they will download in the fastest time and still maintain good picture quality.

 

When AOL's browser then comes along and compresses those files still further, it seriously degrades the images that the webmaster worked so hard to optimize while creating them.

 

How to fix the aol problem:

Once in the AOL browser, make sure that "Uncompressed Graphics" is "blank" in the "Preferences" dialog. The different versions of aol preferences display different words but below is a typical way to change aol's compression.

1. On the AOL browser tool bar click "My AOL"

2. On the drop down menu that appears click "Preferences" window

3. The click the "Web" or "WWW" icon that appears on the "Preferences" window

4. On the "AOL" Internet Properties" screen (figure 2) that may appear next, click the "Web Graphics" tab (this graphic only appears on "WWW" icons. Skip to number 5 if this graphic does not come up.

5. Click the box labeled "Use compressed images" or "Use compressed graphics" (figure 1) to clear the check mark from the box and disable compressed graphics. This box should now be blank.

6. Close all windows that were opened.

 

Figure 1

 

or

Then on PC a screen like this should come up

Click on "Web Graphics"

 

 

 

Figure 2

 

 

 

If the problem is not solved by the above actions, then do the following:

1. Fix the number of colors your monitor can view.

Increase the number of colors your computer is displaying to 16- or 24-bits. AOL's browser has trouble displaying JPEG graphics properly in only 256 colors. Here's how:

• Mac: Open the "Monitors" or "Monitors & Sounds" control panel. Under "Colors" select either "Thousands" or "Millions."
• Windows 95 or 98: Open the "Display" control panel and click the "Settings" tab. Under "Color palette" select either "High Color (16 bit)" or "True Color (32 bit)".
• Windows 3.x: Exit windows and then at the DOS prompt enter "C:\WINDOWS" and then "SETUP". (Do not enter "C:\WINDOWS\SETUP"--you won't get the same result.) Move the highlight bar up to "Display", press Enter, and select one of the settings that lists "32K", "64K", or "16M" on the right. Save settings and exit.

If, in any of these cases, the selection we suggest is not available, consider upgrading your computer's video RAM (VRAM) or display adapter so that it can display more than 256 colors. The whole Web will look better if you do.

2. Make sure you're running AOL 3 or greater. Previous versions are not only buggy but actually display graphics even more poorly.

 

Other AOL problems include viewing old pages.

 

1. From the main AOL menu select the Members Menu (at the top of the screen)

2. Next select the Preferences Option

3. From the group of pictures that pops up select the one labeled WWW

4. From the window that pops up select the Advanced Button

5. There will be several options in this window. Set to Maximum disk space to use for cache to 10 megabytes

6. Next click the purge cache button to clean out all of those outdated web pages.

7. Click OK. Exit out of the preferences window.

8. Now go to the web page that was outdated

 

 

Not able to purchase items using a secure web site

 

AOL is working on this problem. At this time Captain Jack places a non-secure ordering page on your site as well as the secure ordering page for those using aol. THIS IS AN AOL PROBLEM! AOL users are having this problem with all secure web sites.

 

Not able to e-mail forms and attachments

 

This is AOL's way to try to prevent SPAM (unwanted e-mail). Currently attachments can be received from only other AOL members.

 

This also allows their mail servers not to use valuable storage space holding your e-mail while waiting for you to delete the larger sized attachments that could contain several pictures. Pictures can be several megs in size. Currently the only way to solve this problem is to change your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to Captain Jack or any other ISP. Captain Jack e-mail users can mail up to 50 meg. in attachments to their e-mail.