AOL Tips
Have you noticed a funny thing on AOL, like bars or lines through images, or fuzzy images? Do you see really old "What's New" sections or Newsletters? If so, this information is for you.

AOL is one of the largest internet services. To help compensate for this, they compress graphics on their end. The problem with this is that any good webmaster will already have compressed the graphics, so they will load fast. When AOL compresses the already compressed graphics, it will often put a gray or dark colored bar through the image.

AOL also stores pages in your computer ("systems cache") so that if you ask for a page you have seen before, AOL just finds it in your computer instead of going to the internet to get the newer pages.

The result is that with AOL you may not get top quality pictures and may not see the newest versions of web sites that are out there..

Our recommendation to permanently fix these problems is to get an account from Earthlink If you want to stick with AOL then please read below.

The first tip we can give you is to hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard while clicking the reload or refresh button on your AOL browser. This will force AOL to go out to our site and get the ewest copy of that page. Alot of the time AOL is showing you older version of the pages and if we have updated recently you will not see the new pages.

Do you have the latest release of AOL? If not, upgrading is simple and worthwhile. Just go to Keyword:Upgrade for the software and easy-to-follow instructions.

Then, to get the best graphics and newest web pages, just follow these simple steps:

Clear out of all websites you may be visiting, or log off AOL and log back on. To start, click on MyAOL in the green bar at middle top of your screen. Click on Preferences. Click on WWW icon. Click on file tab at top for Web Graphics. Look at where it says "compressed graphics" and click on check mark to make it go away. Then close each page. Then try the site that was giving you the bars across images.

If you still can't see it properly (most people see green lines if there is still a problem) you need to clear a temporary file that AOL creates to help it remember where you've been on the internet. It serves no purpose other than to make AOL load a site a little bit quicker. But in this case it remembers the green lines and shows them again!

To clear the temporary AOL files, first close any website you are looking at or log off AOL and log on again. Click on MyAOL as before. Click on Preferences as before. Click on WWW. Click on file tab at top for "Advanced". Half way down the page click on "view files" This will show a list of every place you have been on the web and may contain hundreds or even thousands of addresses. Press Control A (means "all") on your keyboard. The addresses will be highlighted. Now press delete key. Don't panic! You are deleting a list, and won't lose anything or damage anything! It may take a while if there are tons of names to delete. When done, clear screens and try the site that was giving you the problems.