Replace the IE progress throbber

Feb 15, '02 10:01:55AM

Contributed by: talus

Lets get this straight first, whether or not you like Explorer...you gotta hate the spinning "e".

There are some great throbbers at resExcellence and instructions on how make them and to put them into OS 9 but I didn't know how to do it in OS X. My thanks to the forum here (in this thread) and "ChaChi" for pointing me in the right direction.

You will need a copy of ResEdit (from ResExcellence) and ResConv (free from Black Diamond). Once you have these, read the rest of the article for the instructions.

You will want to close up Explorer while you do this so copy these instructions down. Always work on a copy unless you like downloading a lot!

  1. Control-click on "Internet Explorer" and "Show Package Contents"
  2. Go to: Contents/Resources/Internet Explorer.rsrc
  3. Make a copy of this file (control-click then select "duplicate")
  4. Now use "ResConv" (or something similar) to "Convert Data File to Resource File" and save it. Now you can edit it with "ResEdit".
  5. Launch "Classic" and start "ResEdit"
  6. Open your Replacement Throbber with "ResEdit" and then open the "PICT" resource (double-click). We want to get info (cmd-I) for this and make sure the "ID:" is set to 165 - change it if required. Then copy the picture to the clipboard (cmd-C).
  7. Now open your converted Internet Explorer(.dat) file with "ResEdit" and find the "PICT" resource and double click it to open it.
  8. Now just paste in your new throbber (cmd-V) and bye-bye annoying spinning "e"! Save your work (cmd-S), and we're almost done.
  9. Now we want to use "ResConv" to "Convert Resource File to Data File" and save it back to it's original name (Internet Explorer.rsrc).
  10. Copy it back into place and boot up IE to your new throbber!
PS. If you want to change the splash screen you can find it in: Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Localized.rsrc (PICT ID: 401)

Thanks to Mac OS X hints (www.macosxhints.com) and ResExcellence (www.ResExcellence.com)!

[Editor's note: I have not tried this myself and if you're going to, please make a backup of IE first! It's non-trivial to replace in OS X if you somehow manage to trash it...]

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Mac OS X Hints
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