I was thinking the exact same thing...
That avatar just ends up real annoying after about 0.34 seconds. Sadly, the only solution is to prohibit (or block) gifs entirely, which is crazy since there are non-animated options out there.
However, an extension to block the avatar from an individual user may be possible. I may even look into it at some point, unless of nifkin gets that role change ;P
one of the things i want to port over to vanilla from our own home-brew boards is our avatar code, which does a few neat things. first off, it stores the avatars in the database, serverside. most of our users don't have webspace to speak of, so...
second, there's very strict controls on the sizes of the avatar. i would imagine forcing the uploaded image to be static would be possible in our approach, and this way, you could enforce non-animated gifs.
isn't there a javascript function that stops animated images?
Comments
or... wait for it.. an extension to disable the displaying of avatars altogether..
"Animated .gif avatars make the baby Jesus cry" or something