For those of you who have had difficulties trying to view or download the GIF files on my Cape Dory Online Manual website, (and there have been many, apparently), a Mr. Don Fike of Oak Ridge Tennessee has finally figured out and fixed the problem. It seems I had used a type of format when I scanned the images (GIF89a) that allowed some colors to be displayed as transparent, in this case the color was black. As the illustrations were two-toned, black and white, a downloaded line drawing appeared as a blank white image. The browser I use is Netscape 4.7 with IrfanView as an external GIF viewer and it had no trouble displaying the pictures correctly, but those using Microsoft Internet Explorer could not see them, it seems. I had viewed my site using MS IE and it seemed OK but I apparently had never tried viewing the illustration downloads that way and was at a loss as to what to recommend to those who informed me of their viewing and downloading problems. Don has very kindly converted the images to an earlier format (GIF87a) which doesn't have transparency capabilities and I have put these on my website in place of the old ones. Hopefully this will be a permanent solution to a long standing difficulty. If anyone is still experiencing problems I would be grateful if they would contact me. Sorry for those who have had these problems in the past and a big thanks to Don for straightening them out.
Ed
cd27@txdirect.net
GIF Mystery Revealed
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