Graphics in AOL 4.0

America Online plays a lot of tricks to try to make the online experience "easier" for the average user. One of these hidden features is the automatic downsizing of large images. Basically, everything you download (including inlined images on Web pages) are loaded to an AOL server, downsampled if required, then relayed to your browser.

Unfortunately, this ruins the look of many Web graphics, especially photos. It also wreaks havoc with some plugins, such as VRML viewers.

The good news is that you can disable this feature, telling AOL to mind its own business, and let you have the actual, unadulterated graphics!

Getting Good Web Graphics in AOL 4.0

This assumes that IE4.0 is the browser, which is the default configuration of AOL4.0

Dec 31, 1998