RE: relevant in a lateral interactive sort of a way

This really isn't the place for these kind of questions, but you can assign
a background image to a class.
 
The obvious problems with this solutions are with browsers that don't
support stylesheets or the hover event (NS 4.x)
 
<style type="text/css">
<!--
a.foo{background:url(foo.png);
padding:.5em 1em;
}
a.foo:hover, a.foo:active, a.foo:focus{background:url(foohover.png);
}
-->
</style>

[snip]

<a href="foo.com" class="foo">Go to Foo</a>