I put together a Jekyll plugin called GifTag which turns local gif references into a styled placeholder with play/pause and preloading. This allows a page to finish loading before transferring heavy animated gifs, and adds user control as to when they start playing (as well as allowing them to stop).
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://brettterpstra.com/2015/08/20/a-jekyll-plugin-for-animated-gifs