Hope I don't offend you, but having gifs that constantly load in order to
display animation really hurts when you are on a 28.8K connection.  Not only
does it slow down the page while loading (because the page keeps trying to
load the same gif in preference to loading parts of the page that are useful),
but it is annoying if you're doing anything else involving your connection,
such as typing stuff in on your provider's account, using ftp, etc.