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Answer : While maybe gifsockets would work (I haven't tried that before...), there is no network traffic while I am looking at the image other than the initial image load. I am also seeing it it jump from 41 to 42 again. A Reload took it down to 39. It appears to be just a script that generates 60 frames of animation and sends them to the user. This could probably be done in any language. Here is how it is done in php: http://seanja.com/secret/countdown/ I found http://sendtric.com/ which is free and very easy to integrate.

Answer : You can use the libgif library. It allows you to start/stop the gif and control which frame the gif is on. <script type="text/javascript" src="./libgif.js"></script> <img src="./example1_preview.gif" rel:animated_src="./example1.gif" width="360" height="360" rel:auto_play="1" rel:rubbable="1" /> <script type="text/javascript"> $$('img').each(function (img_tag) { if (/.*\.gif/.test(img_tag.src)) { var rub = new SuperGif({ gif: img_tag } ); rub.load(function(){ console.log('oh hey, now the gif is loaded'); }); } }); </script> (most of the code is taken directly from their example) I use x-gif it's pretty cool and easy to setup. From Github: <x-gif src="probably_cats.gif"></x-gif> Where you can add the following as attributes...