Why do animated gif images take so long to load?

Question

Why do simple animated gif images take so long to load before they start animating smoothly in a browser, even when the file size is smaller than the cumulative file size of other non-animated image files that have already loaded on the same page?

Answer 1

Simpleton, check out this link, it seems to be a common issue: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=295 and: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=478663&start=0

From skimming these two links, it seems that 1) either the design of the browser limits the FPS of gifs or 2) your browser uses a webkit that loads gifs slowly, and switching to a different browser may speed it up.