Instead of having the animation in the statusbar, put it into the menubar (similar to firefox).
The basic idea is pretty simple: An insensitive menu item that takes up all available space on the menubar, with a custom widget (ala ThunarStatusbarIcon) that draws the circle.
Err, it doesn't need to take up all available space. Instead gtk_menu_item_set_right_justified() should be used. And the icon should have a fixed width/height (as determined from GTK_ICON_SIZE_MENU).
Committed with revision 19668. 2006-01-30 Benedikt Meurer <benny@xfce.org> * thunar/Makefile.am, thunar/thunar-throbber.{c,h}: Import the ThunarThrobber widget class, which display a loading animation similar to the one found in Firefox. * thunar/thunar-statusbar.{c,h}: Drop the statusbar icon, as it's confusing, since it refers to the current folder instead of the selected items, but the text displayed in the statusbar refers to the selected items. * thunar/thunar-window.c: Add a ThunarThrobber to the menu bar, and use it to display loading animation instead of the statusbar icon.