In true AOL fashion most America Online users are kept in the dark about their internet experience. Typically, AOL users are left to discover, on their own, that a vast majority of their surfing and searching options have been filtered and are never aware of how much more is "out there" on the net.

In this case - it is a matter of what you see or, more specifically, how you see it.

If you are browsing through AOL's "internal" web browser, you are most likely missing out the artwork that is available from this site. Of course, the artwork will download in your browser, but it is not the same image that I created. AOL has compressed it for your viewing pleasure, and in doing so has turned it into a blurry, garbled mess.

In addition to compressing the graphics (which I have already done for you), AOL shrinks each one to 640 x 480 (due, it says, to limitations in their compression software). Many of my images are done to at least 1280x1024. This drastic change by AOL truly degrades the overall quality of the images.

If you want to read AOL's explanation of why and how they do it, contact them and ask... you might be surprised at how poor the explanation is. The best way to view this site is with an "external browser" such as Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer. Each of these is freely available for downloading (check out http://www.browsers.com/). Once you have downloaded your browser of choice and installed it, you can connect to AOL as usual, minimize AOL, and open your Netscape or IE. Only then will you be seeing the web as it was designed, a lot faster and much better looking.

Trust me... I've seen both sides. The difference is dramatic.

If you must use AOL's internal browser, disable AOL's image compression and view my graphics as they were intended. The internet will still be kind of slow, but at least my art won't look like it was painted with a can of spraypaint.

On a personal note:

I'm proud of my graphics, and I put a lot of work into compressing them for the web in a way which retains as much of their original quality as possible. I do not appreciate America Online altering my artistic vision to suit their network, and I appreciate it even less when they do not inform their users of what they have done.

I'd hate to imagine the thousands of AOL users who have visited my site for the first time only to be greeted by muddy graphics and slow downloads. Even worse, AOL's image compression blurs the copyright information on my images to the point where it is conveniently unreadable.

Much of the web's graphics (including my own) are therefore incompatible with AOL.