Are you using a web accelerator or can your ISP send images in a lower resolution to speed up loading pages?

You can find the connection settings in Tools > Options > Advanced : Network : Connection
If you do not need to use a proxy to connect to internet then select "No Proxy"

See "Firefox connection settings":

• Firefox can't load websites but other browsers can

i use earthlink dialup and have checked under tools. it's set to "use system proxy settings" by default when firefox initially uploaded. i have no idea what a proxy connection is... to know if i need to set it to no proxy or what.

i have also checked the accelerator settings and set it to best picture quality (slowest setting) and refreshed the page, but no improvement. i've also right clicked on the picture because at one point i had an option to improve that specific picture's quality but that's no longer an option on my right click menu. i just can't figure out why, what happened with updating the software. it happened immediately after installing the new software.  ???

What version did you update from?
An earlier 3.6.x version , or 3.5.x ? Or maybe 3.0.19 ??

Have you tried using "No Proxy" instead of "Use system settings"?
The default was changed to "Use system settings" around the time Firefox 3.6.6 came out.

Another thing, do you have any disabled extensions showing in Tools > Addons > Extensions? Like maybe a "Web Accelerator" extension that shows as incompatible with Firefox 3.6.13?

i just tried the no proxy, refreshed and no change.

i also tried setting the accelerator to slowest again after changing the proxy status...still no change.

i upgraded from a 3.5.x version, i think, to the 3.6.13.

i looked in the extensions and all that is there are some things for my AVG but nothing saying incompatible. everything seems to be working and the only option was to 'disable' them.

it's really getting frustrating... thanks for everyone's help... maybe eventually we'll hit on what's causing it!