Switching browser would honestly be harder than switching OS at this point.You could load these pages with Opera and tell it to switch off animations etc.
Most of the time, they aren't affected. I've only had a couple times when an animated gif blew up Chrome. I seem to remember one of those being in the Codex thread. Couldn't tell you whether that was due to the gif itself, a specific problem within the browser, the phase of the moon, the way my shoes were tied, or some exacting combination of all of those. IE pukes on pretty much all of them, or at least it did prior to your tweak.
Didn't realize the other browsers were affected too. Well, let's hope for the best.
Today there were some posting issues. They should be solved by now.
So much for adding last minute changes and then leaving the site alone for a few hours