A complete reformatting of the disk, and several fresh installs later my mom’s iBook is again working. (though it seemed touch and go for a while whilst installing The Sims)

And I took the opportunity to upgrade her to Mozilla versus the default installed IE 5.1. This apparently was a bit of a mistake. I quickly got a call saying that while she liked Mozilla the throbber (my word not hers) gave her the creeps. Something about the way the M disolved into scales just unnerved her.

So here I am sitting back in front of the iBook futzing. It was sooo easy to change the throbber on Galeon, how hard can this be.

  1. Find an alternative throbber, like the old Netscape one
  2. Edit userChrome.css to set the busy, and default states
    • its in Macintosh HD::Users::username::Library::Mozilla::Profiles::default::random junk::chrome
    • you can copy a template from Mozilla::US::chrome::userChrome-example.css
    • add the proper XUL statements, with the above throbber they are: > ```

      navigator-throbber

      { list-style-image : url("animthrob_single.gif") !important; }

      navigator-throbber[busy="true"]

      { list-style-image : url("animthrob.gif") !important; }

      ```

    • if you are using the TextEdit application
      • swear at it loudly
      • then choose “Make Plain Text” from the Format menu so as to not save the file in Rich Text Format
      • promise yourself that you’ll install BBEdit
  3. restart and perhaps, cross your fingers, pray, slaughter chickens, or whatever works for you. Anybody know a good source for alternative Mozilla throbbers?