Name of the spinning load/wait/buffer animation

Question

You see these things everywhere in both desktop and web development. Do they have a proper term or name? I thought I heard someone call it a "thumper" once, but Google doesn't seem to agree.

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Not really sure how to categorize this, since it's applicable everywhere.

Answer 1

The term you heard was most likely Throbber - this is from early web browsers (Mosaic, Netscape) where the page load indicator was indicated by animating the browser logo.