A little known feature in IE is STYLE FILTERS

they are not like CSS but a Filter TECHNOLOGY designed to add GRAPHICS-LIKE effects/Illusions to TEXT...

They can be used to imitate Photoshop-like effects
and
Added To DHTML they can imitate FLASH, JAVA APPLETS etc...

Since they are a IE only feature - they bow-out gracefully in Netcape and other browsers.

Additionally - they load easily (because they are text-effects) - require VERY little HTML code to implement - and allow the "image-like text" to be read by search engines just like any text is.