The maps are in an unrecognized format, or are in .art format. Whats wrong?
All of the map files have a ‘.gif’ extension. Several people have reported downloading files with a ‘.art’ extension (which do not exist on this website), or downloading .GIF files that have an invalid format. This problem will ONLY occur if you are accessing the web from AOL, are using AOL’s internal web browser, and have image compression turned on. What is happening is that the AOL proxy/cache system compresses all graphics, converting them using a ‘lossy’ compression scheme producing a ‘.art’ file instead of the original ‘.gif’. When the AOL browser requests the ‘.gif’, the AOL proxy/cache sends the ‘.art’ instead, which the browser knows how to display. This is designed to speed up the display of photographic images, and works well for that. There’s two things wrong with this – the ‘lossy’ compression may render the maps unreadable (GIF is a ‘lossless’ compression scheme), and, although AOL’s built in browser can display ‘.art’ files, once you save it to disk, nothing else can dis
