‘Throbber’ in Drupal is the animated loader ( found at /misc/throbber.gif ), used to indicate Ajax progress.
If you want to change it evenly across your theme, don’t even think to just replace the ‘/misc/throbber.gif’, instead save your .gif file in your drupal theme, and in your theme’s .css file override drupal’s default CSS rules which style the ‘throbber’. This default CSS can be found ( but not edited ) at ‘/modules/system/system.base.css’, and you just have to copy them to your css file, as shown below.
Keep in mind that ‘throbber.gif’ is in fact a sprite image, which contains two states ( one static, used for idle state, and one animated used for progress ).
Add these in your theme’s .css, and tweak them accordingly to your animated loader :
/* these apply to auto-completing form fields */
html.js input.form-autocomplete {
background-image: url(path-to-your/loader.gif); /* tweak this according to your gif */
background-position: 100% 0px; /* tweak this according to your gif */
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
html.js input.throbbing {
background-position: 100% -20px; /* tweak this according to your gif */
}
/* these apply to all ajax progresses */
.ajax-progress {
display: inline-block;
*display: inline;
*zoom: 1;
}
.ajax-progress .throbber {
background: transparent url(path-to-your/loader.gif) no-repeat 0px 0px; /* tweak this according to your gif */
float: left;
height: 20px; /* tweak this according to your gif */
width: 20px; /* tweak this according to your gif */
margin: 2px;
}