I've just joined geekzone because there don't seem to be a lot of places to ask questions. I had a stroke nearly two years ago - and with very limited local support, switched to Windows - which I had to use for some work programs anyway. Now I have this question, so we'll see how much local support there is - or whether I have to go to an international forum for help.

Recently I replaced my long serving IBM ThinkPad with a newer Asus machine. This involved an upgrade from 2000 to XP. Otherwise most is the same. What's not the same is I have upgraded Firefox from 2 to 3, and IE from 6 to 7.

I have been using a monthly public newsletter on my site for ages. It consists of four short articles, two of which have small images. I'm not an expert in dealing with graphical images - but something in the changes has me confused. The source for the monthly updates comes in various forms. I use the HTML one and use SAVE AS on the image file. This has always worked in the past - but with the new system, the GIF images (about 15k) are saving as BMP images (about 45k).

I can resave them as GIF's - which reduces them back to 15k, but saving them using both FF and IE saves them as BMP's - with no option for other formats. This is despite me calling them GIF's (out of habit). I'm very confused - and I don't think it's a hangover from the stroke (although I can never be too sure of that). It may be something so basic I'm embarassed - but it used to work simply - now it doesn't and I'm confused.

So when I view the original source, it definitely says GIF. I can view just the image - but when I save it, no matter what the extension is, based on size it is a BMP. It also doesn't show properly in my HTML editor as a GIF - but when named as a BMP, it shows OK.

One thought I had was that since FF3 uses some of Windows internet settings, it might be there - but I can't see anything obvious.

I've been working on this for days, off and on, and simply have to do more productive work. However, I'm going to have future newsletters like this, and prefer not to "fudge" things - so would appreciate any (polite) suggestions.

Thanks

Phil A