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Temporarily pause animated GIF playback Web Browsers
I like the image-resource.com site a lot. Their reviews of digital cameras are quite extensive, and include animated GIFs of the various menu functions of the LCDs on the cameras. But I had trouble reading the many menu functions in the animated GIFs, as they simply play too fast too see all the options.

A simple way to pause the animation is to click and hold on the thumb bar in the vertical scrollbar of your browser (wiggle it a bit if needed). The animation stops dead in its tracks. Now you can read all the functions at your leisure. A quick release and click-and hold brings up the next frame of the animation.

This works in all the OS X browsers I've tested (Safari, FireFox, Explorer, Netscape).
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Temporarily pause animated GIF playback
Authored by: Auricchio on Dec 27, '04 02:01:57PM

Or just pull down any menu. Animation stops while the menu is open.

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EMOJO: mojo no longer workin'



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Temporarily pause animated GIF playback
Authored by: PeterDie on Dec 27, '04 05:32:59PM

And risks obscuring the very part you were studying



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Temporarily pause animated GIF playback
Authored by: Auricchio on Dec 27, '04 06:14:44PM

Well, yes, if the menu you pull down obscures the desired portion of the window, you can always pull down another menu.

I just find it much easier to hit a menu on the PowerBook rather than grabbing the "thumb" of the scroll bar...

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EMOJO: mojo no longer workin'



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Permanently pause animated GIF playback
Authored by: thatmushroom on Dec 28, '04 03:33:10AM

I've personally found that the best way to look at individual GIF frames is to drag the image to the desktop and then open it with Preview. It's not as temporary, but it's still quite easy.



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Temporarily pause animated GIF playback
Authored by: PhlegmMaster on Dec 28, '04 05:21:21AM

As I recall, this is actually part of a bug(?) where when you're dragging the mouse, everything in the background freezes.
It used to/still does occur when you had Quicktime playing in one Safari tab, then in another you start to drag the scroll-bar down, after a couple of seconds, the audio would cut out.



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Even simpler: use firefox
Authored by: eredhuin on Jan 02, '05 11:14:06AM

Even simpler, if using Mozilla/Firefox: Press the ESC key to pause animated gif files. This trick doesn't work for FLASH ads. However, there is a firefox plugin called adblock, which can make even the most annoying flash ad go away.

I still use Safari most of the time, but I do use Firefox for browsing certain web sites which go overboard on the in-your-face flash ads. It's eeirly simple to add a rule to block everything that comes from "http://ad.doubleclick.net/*".



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