Hey, I sort of stumbled on a possible solution to the animated gif problem in Chrome. The issue seems to be with the Adobe Flash plugin.
Problem
Basically, Flash has an installer used for most browsers. Google, however, has its own internal installation of flash. When both are active in Google, the resulting conflict seems to cause problems: the browser will hang periodically, and animated gifs on a page where the plugin is also present will often not run. I think this is why the problem was so prevalent in the funny images thread - because most times, the page has youtube videos (flash) as well as animated gifs. Opening the gif in its own window allowed it to open on a page where the flash plugin wasn't invoked.
Solution- Open Chrome.
- Type about: plugins into the url bar (remove space between : and p - putting these two together in this post displays a smiley)
- Expand the Details link in the top-right corner (if it isn't already expanded)
- Find Adobe Flash Player. If you are like me, you will see Shockwave Flash listed twice under the Adobe Flash Player heading. One will have a path inside C:\Windows - this is Adobe's install. The other will be in either C:\User\Apps or C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome - this is Google's.
- Disable the Google version of the plugin. I actually didn't try disabling the Adobe version, so I'm not sure if that will work or not.
- Restart browser.
- Enjoy your animated gifs.