3.0beta4 returned the ability to stop animations. All 3.0 versions support the loop count. MS Explorer 2 for Mac does t loop animations. If animation is too big to fit in disk cache it will not loop. Animations are slow GIFBuilder has an automatic feature that eliminates the major cause of this problem.
Many animators repaint the entire frame over and over, even if very little changes.
GIF89a animation allows you to animate small portions of the GIF reducing file size significantly. Smaller palettes also reduce size. GIF can have any number of color from 2 to 256. The code is not written to display nicely when viewing a raw image file without HTML code. Netscape will flash a black screen at the begining and at the first loop.