GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 686021
spinner animation should not be subject to enable-animations setting
Last modified: 2012-11-01 11:29:24 UTC
Or at least, there should be some alternative way to convey activity in this case. Just not doing anything breaks the spinner.
IMO it would be preferable for the spinner to just alter its appearance between active and inactive state, but not animate, when animations are disabled. (Personally, I expect setting gtk-enable-animations = false to really eliminate *all* animations.)