I'm trying to create an HTA on a closed system (so security isn't an issue) that will ping several devices and output the results on the HTA. The actual pinging is handled by a batch file, and everything works; however, I want to display an animated GIF where the data will appear (to give the impression of a progress meter), and I'm not sure how to go about showing the GIF at the moment the button is clicked, then overwrite it with the ping results. Here's the subroutine I've cobbled together:

<script language="VBScript">
Sub DevicePing
Dim WShell
Set WShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
WShell.Run "cmd.exe /c DevicePing.cmd", 0, True
Const ForReading = 1
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(".\CompleteResults.txt")
strContent = objFile.ReadAll
objFile.Close
strNewText = "<span style='background-color: #FFFF00'>text</span>"
strContent = Replace(strContent, "text", strNewText)
DataArea.InnerHTML = strContent
End Sub
</script>

What's wrong with feeding an img tag into DataArea.InnerHTML?

I'm still learning about HTAs, VBS, and HTML in general (trying to learn all three at once is probably silly, but I do like a challenge). Most of what I have learned has come from looking at other people's code (I'm hoping to take a class sometime this summer). What would be a good way to apply the tag so that it appears when the subroutine is called?