@Peter: nice article! Like the idea, I’ll be using it a new site I’m building for work :)

However, I didn’t mind the text to be affect as I was applying opacity to a footer element which I wanted to blend into the textured background.

Using the opacity attribute worked fine in Firefox. Opera made the text aliased. And IE off course didn’t apply it. However not even the filter opacity worked in IE7 for some reason.

So I ended up using a small alpha transparent background image instead. Not ideal, but it did the trick in Firefox, Opera and IE7.
Saying that, I’m not looking forward to creating a fallback solution for older browsers. Especially IE6-.

On another project of mine I used similar techniques as you described. All though that was part of an AJAXification of a gallery section. So the the elements used for it was all done in DOM scripting, leaving the source semantically clean.

You’d think we’d have proper transparency control in CSS by 2007 wouldn’t you..? *sigh*

Seeing how IE7 shaped up from previous versions, I’m looking forward towards the next as it’s crucial to allow webdesigners migrate towards CSS3.

I’d only wish that other browsers would pick up on conditional comments to allow an easy way to target specific browsers and address their issues. In fact, allows conditional comments inside CSS files would be better. You could then have a main css file that would direct the various browsers to the appropriate stylesheets. CSS3 powered browers could get your ultra-super-duper cutting edge stylesheet, while you served a more conservative stylesheet to the older browers.

Ach, the dreams…