We cherish GIFs, everybody does. They’re an incredible way to respond to just about everything. If you ever discover a particularly active thread on Twitter it will be rife with GIFs. They’re popular to the point that dedicated keyboards like Giphy keyboard exist so you can easily search for and share GIFs. Both Whatsapp and Facebook support GIFs. Unfortunately, there is nothing preventing anybody from misusing or overusing a GIF. Buzzfeed has transformed it into a post format where the content is pretty much just GIFs, all under their own particular heading. It’s not the only one. websites use GIFs unnecessarily. GIF Blocker is a Firefox add-on that can prevent GIFs from loading.
Stop GIFS From Loading
Install the GIF Blocker and enable it. It adds a button just next to the URL bar. Click it to stop GIFs from loading in Firefox. Whenever it is enabled, the add-on’s icon will turn blue.
The add-on claims to embed a local vector image in place of the GIF but it actually failed to do as such during our tests. It only removed the GIF in question and leaving behind its caption.
You can enable or disable the GIF blocker from its toolbar button, however, enabling or disabling it won’t load or unload GIFs. If disable the add-on, you will have to reload the current page to see GIFs on it. If you enable the add-on, you will have to open the page in another tab to remove GIFs from it.
Limitations
GIF Blocker works mostly on websites that aren’t normally built to show you GIFs. It will not work on websites like Reddit or Imgur which are actually built to show you this specific type of image. It is possible that the add-on won’t work at all on file sharing and viewing web apps. It is also unfortunate that for you to load the GIFs, you will need to reload the whole page. This not just means you need to wait for the page to load again but also that you can’t specifically view GIFs on the page. If a page has a lot of GIFs, and you’re just interested in viewing maybe one or two, the add-on can’t help you. It is an all-or-nothing deal.
We also observed that the add-on, on a rare case, will also block images that are not GIFs. Here, we are not referring to images that have the GIF extension that is static. But rather We’re talking about a simple JPG file that GIF Blocker erroneously blocked. The add-on works generally, however, has its chinks. All things considered, if you’re tired of how enthusiastically everybody is embracing the GIF format, this add-on will bring back sanity to your browsing sessions.
