Microsoft Office Live Small Business Community

I've been experimenting with a lot of different suggestions on how to upload quality photos and images to my website. I've done all types of images (gif, jpg, bitmap) through Image Gallery, the same through Document Gallery (one suggested workaround), and also tried it using Firefox vs Internet Explorer.

My problem is that no matter what I do, no matter what quality or type of image I'm using, by the time it reaches the website and is seen with the "View" command, it looks fuzzy. In fact, I've noticed this on many websites I've visited, to make sure I wasn't the only one experiencing this problem. It's as if the pixels get smeared around a bit during the process of uploading to the website. Is there any way to fix this so I have at least clear images? This is something that goes beyond nitpicking, since image quality affects the overall user experience when visiting your website. It can make the difference between "home-made" and "professional" websites. (See my avatar image for example of "fuzziness")

Edit: Found an answer to my image problems after more digging: http://myofficelivecommunity.com/discuss/forums/t/5142.aspx

This is definitely something that needs to be fixed though, instead of always using this workaround.

 Also, I've been considering trying out the Shop feature of OL for some time now since it's release, waiting to see others use it and hopefully see some of the glitches work themselves out. If I wanted to "trial" the Shop feature, am I able to turn it off or remove it in one month's time (the no fee period offered right now) if I'm not satisfied with how it looks and works? My main concern here is the inventory updating issue (non-existant), the monthly fee (I was hoping to make a completely free website for the person I am making this for), and the compatibility with the website I have created by hand with my own images (backgrounds, color schemes, etc). At this point, if I can't trial it for that period of time, then I will just have to find something else.

 And a follow up on that, if I DO go out and find a third party shopping feature and use it on my website, will OL charge me some kind of fee for not using their Shop feature instead? (This would be disappointing.)

 Thanks in advance for help with these concerns,

 Otterhead

Any you can pay for, you can also stop paying for at any time. Fully functional in that respect. Truthfully, for a business website, this is more than reasonable. If you expect a site to function for business purposes, you pretty much have to pay for it. Not many free hosting sites are capable of handling that much traffic and even if they are, they can't guarantee enough up-time to make a business site very viable.

As far as the shopping cart, I wish it weren't the case, but as far as I have found, there is no other option to use a different shopping cart. I give them credit for being rather simple to use, but there isn't much room for flexibility on it. Extremely limited control over the functionality and look, but it does the job. I hope that someone will post on here and tell me I'm wrong, but I have seen no evidence of it as of yet.

You can try OLXT-SM ( OLXT Store Manager )

To avoid Office Live "fuzzy" your images, you can put image in Document Galeray or on Office Live workspace( with public view permission) or any 3rd party place.