Internet Explorer 6 troubles

[Si_GTi]

Right, I'm at the end of my tether with this one, so its over to you guys (and gals!) to help me out if you can!

I've recently gotten on the internet on my own computer at home (thru my mobile phone) and have found that all of the images displayed on the screen, no matter what their size, are displayed a bit pixelly. If the image in question is a thumbnail, hovering the mouse over the image displays a tooltip that reads "...press shift-r to improve the quality of this image or ctrl-f5 to refresh the page". Has anyone seen this before? I've searched Microsoft's IE6 webpages, Technet and Google's Groups section for answers but I'm stuck!

I'm running:

• IE6 (service pack 1)
  AMD 850 Athlon, 512meg, 80gb HDD
  Hercules 64meg Prophet 4500 TV-Out
  17" Dell E172FP TFT Screen (1280x1024 current res.)

I reckon possible issues could include the monitor/graphics card interface or screen resolution? Of course it could be down to the mobile phone's settings... I've gone thru all the options IE6 can offer to no avail and also dropped to a (relatively) measly 1024x768 resolution. Text size in IE6 is 'medium' and erm, thats about all I can think of!

Any suggestions please??

[KarlM]

I would imagine that IE6 reduces the image quality so it downloads quicker?

[deadcat]

try another browser.
IE6 pretty much sucks.
try mozilla, http://www.mozilla.org/

[Tahrey1043]

it's probably detected that you have a low speed connection and so has only downloaded part of the pics to show a page-preview before you waste time on downloading all of them (which can be a lot of data)?

cant see any problem with your computer setup, it should work perfectly fine with all that. Though 1024x768 is a better idea anyway as pictures won't look "squashed" (and it's pretty nice for a 17"er, if you can't get 1152x864 or 1280x960) due to 1280x1024s odd aspect ratio. Not to mention the increased refresh rate being easier on your eyes.

Get thee to Mozzila website and download firefox.... its only about 4mb and a vast improvement (get thunderbird while you're at it, transfer your outlook settings, then GET RID OF OUTLOOK). See if that improves pic quality... and increases download time!

let me get this straight again - you're connecting to the web, at home, through a mobile?! isnt that both slow and godawful expensive?

[Si_GTi]

I'm in the busness of getting broadband - against my parent's wishes!! Dad reckons I should just use his 56k connection and Mum says "what's the point?". But yeah it is a tad expensive, but 115.2kbps isn't too shoddy.

I've downloaded Mozilla 1.7 a few minutes ago so I'll try that later this evening and see how it goes.

Thanks peeps.

[Tahrey1043]

10 or even 5p a minute in order to go from 42kbits to a not-much-better-really 100k-ish still sounds rather unbargainlike to me! I'd trudge with the 42k and suck it up til the broadband comes in, and use the saving to pay for the high-speed connection.... everything pales in comparison next to a bona-fide 512k (or, if you're on telewest, 750k after their recent free upgrade... wheeeeee!)

kinda like paying rent on one of those electric-assist bikes when you're only a few weeks away from getting a car

How do you do that internet connecty thing with a mobile anyway? I'm intrigued now, I want details Thought you needed a special card that you plugged in the PCMCIA slot of a laptop..

[Si_GTi]

Tahrey: you were right about the phone limiting the amount of data it downloads - but I can't change it so I'm stuck with shoddy looking graphics until broadband arrives! Ho hum. At least theres always work's internet eh?

As for the phone itself, I recently upgraded to a Motorola v600 and bought the USB data cable and software that comes with it. Using the software you can access the internet thru the phone's GPRS setup. Orange told me it costs £3 per megabyte of data (combined sent and recieved). This is fine for sites with few or none pictures as there isn't much data to exchange, and MSN works fine (I can be on for at least 6-8 hrs by my calculations), but load up any picture galleries and the costs start rising..! It is very much an interim solution before I get my act together and jump on the broadband wagon!

Thanks for the help peeps!

[Tahrey1043]

THREE POUNDS PER MEGABYTE?!

That's equivalent to about 60p per minute over 56k, were you to have it running full whack downloading something..... and hell, even text pages could start to rack up!

If you estimate a forum page as maybe 50k with all code, text, smileys and sigs... (so it takes 8-10 secs to fully load on a regular modem).. that's 15p a page (vs what.... a penny over modem, say 3p including the time taken to read it). Yer mental!


(( crikey, thats expensive even by regular 'pricey' WAP standards - you could potentially download about 2.0 - 4.5mb of stuff over a wap connection for the same money... sure, it'd take you 30 minutes to an hour as its 9.6k, but whose counting when theres pennies involved? ))

[Si_GTi]

Yup, its expensive. And not used very often either. Funny that...

[retro]

Its a stupid Microsoft gimmick. Fortunately you can turn it off.

In IE, go to

Options / Internet Options / Advanced tab

Scroll down to the 'Multimedia' section

Uncheck the box that says 'Enable automatic image resizing'

Uncheck the box that says 'Enable image toolbar'

Close IE then restart it and it should be ok.


Seriously though, everybody should at least consider ditching IE for something better and more secure. Mozilla is highly recommended.

[Tahrey1043]

Yup, its expensive. And not used very often either. Funny that...

remind me, were you talking mobile internet, or super unleaded?

[deadcat]

Seriously though, everybody should at least consider ditching IE for something better and more secure. Mozilla is highly recommended.

Big support there.
Even if you don't download mozilla, at least give firefox a go. it's like stripped down mozilla. one of the fastest browsers out there. I use it all the time at work.