How to Stop GIF Image Animations from Playing in IE or Firefox

Unlike Macromedia Flash movies, you cannot right click a GIF animation to stop it from playing over and over again.

Here's a very simple trick to prevent GIF graphics from animating in your web browser window - once the web page has stopped loading and GIF frames start to animate, just hit the ESC key on your keyboard. [test live]

That will immediately disable all the GIF animations on that webpage. In order to replay the animated images, you'll have to reload the page by pressing F5 or Ctrl+R.

If you want to permanently block GIF animations in your browser, do the following:

In Firefox - Type about:config and change the value of string image.animation_mode from normal to none.

In Internet Explorer - Tools -> Options -> Advance. Uncheck the box in Multimedia group that says "Play animations in web pages"

Unrelated: Create Animated GIF Images Online

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