Add option to make animated GIF images click-to-play

[Šime]

Today’s Mozilla Hacks article “A new year, a new MDN” includes several animated GIF images. These GIFs play automatically and loop infinitely (right?), and Firefox provides no way to pause them. This is a problem for some people. At the very least, it can be distracting.

There are multiple ways Mozilla can mitigate this issue, but the one feature that I’d like to see most is an option in Firefox that would stop all animated GIFs from auto-playing and instead make them click-to-play. For example, there could be a small play/pause button in the corner of the image.

Of course, websites should stop using GIFs and start using <video>, but many websites don’t. For example, Mozilla Hacks. GIFs are going to stick around for another decade.

[xrvs]

I second this idea. Additionally, animated PNG and WEBP should also be controlled similarly.

[gltch]

disagree, it should be something like "Add option to make animated images click-to-play" since there isn't only gif 🙂

(luckily there is already something for Audio and Video Playback "Block Audio and Video" <3)

+1, performance could skyrocketing (dis even a word?)
it also could make some sites more bearable, thos who playin' random animated images to get your whole attention span..

[clepsydrae]

+1 to everything, but it would be great to do as Yukulélé says and implement real controls.

I.e. the functionality of JSGIF should be in every browser, IMO: https://slbkbs.org/jsgif/

We use gifs as animations, but provide none of the control we typically demand for animations (play, pause, forward/back a frame, etc.) It's a real hole in the functionality.