Chrome extension to stop animations from distracting you while reading.
Just press the escape key [esc]... and press again to restore.
This stops everything from GIF, Flash, and even JavaScript.
Works by taking a screen shot and layering it over the page... unfortunately it can't do a full screen shot (see bug report 45209), so it re-updates when you scroll or resize the window.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stop-animations/gemmknjnneiojfjelmgappppbaneikda
As Google Chrome cannot take a screen shot of the whole page, it creates a new one on scrolling or resizing.
This can create a jumpy/flickering type experience which is not ideal:
Feature request: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=469663
Was: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=45209
Deocumentation: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/tabs.html#method-captureVisibleTab
It looks like there might be the ability to pause animated images (not JS, CSS, etc):
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=3690