If you experiment with the alpha channel transparency capabilites of PNG files you can create really cool half-transperant results.
This won't work in Internet Explorer, because Microsoft cant code for **** and they do not follow the HTML standard.
Behold: <img src="http://psionicist.online.fr/testavatar.png">
Example. Same image, different background colors.
<table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=6 bgcolor="#FFCC00"><tr><td><img src="http://psionicist.online.fr/testavatar.png"></td></tr></table>
<table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=6 bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><tr><td><img src="http://psionicist.online.fr/testavatar.png"></td></tr></table>
<table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=6 bgcolor="#008800"><tr><td><img src="http://psionicist.online.fr/testavatar.png"></td></tr></table>
In photoshop, start with a 60x60 image with transparent BG, create something then change the filter opacity. Save for web as PNG-24 with transperancy, rename the file to .gif and upload to the forums. It works just fine.
