[thelist] AOL Image Problems

[Ron Thigpen]

Sandy, 

  I have seen one solution floated on other lists, and apparently implemented
successfully.  This fix takes advantage of the fact that AOL will convert GIF
and JPEG files to their highly compressed ART format, but will not convert
animated GIFs.  

<snip source="webmaster.info.aol.com">
In order for an image to be compressed, it must have the following
characteristics:

 The user must have compression turned on. 
 The object must be in the BMP, GIF, JPEG, or Progressive JPEG format. 
 The object must not be an animated GIF. 
 The object size must be between 1KB and 8 MB. 
</snip>

  Basically, you take a static GIF, add an indentical frame and re-save.  The
AOL compression scheme will then leave it alone.  Other tweaks should work, such
as a transaparent, 0 second first frame, etc.  Whatever will make the AOL
software see the image as animated and not increase filesize too much.  I don't
know of a similar workaround for JPEGs.

--Ron Thigpen


Sandy Sherman wrote:
> 
> Was there any kind of solution for this as a designer?  I know someone
> mentioned that the actual users can change a setting on their
> browser.....but is there anything I can do for better results?