PNGs, Masks, and Opacities/Transparencies

I've been trying to figure this out for the past two days without any proof at all that what I'm looking for may in fact actually exist.

I've noticed that although PNGs are handled excellently by some of my great programs and even games that I have, IE barely handles them at all.  Is Microsoft being lazy with Internet Explorer?  Stubborn?  Or what?  I mean seriously, it's like Internet Explorer is the only program without correct compatibility.

Anyways, this is my problem: I want to take advantage of PNGs opacity/tranceparencies capabilities as they are obviously far superior to that of the GIF file format (only allowing for one color as a complete transparency, no colors in-between as only partial tranceparencies), however Internet Explorer always treats PNG opacity with a gray color instead of any transparency at all.  Is there something I can do in Photoshop to correct this?  Or is there a filter I can use with CSS2 or any code at all that I can use to apply an image as a mask?

PLEASE, I want to know this, GIFs are horrible with transparencies because they give all images with transparent backgrounds a pixelated ugly edge.

If there is nothing for this now, is there a recommendation for it that I just don't know about already?

Thank you.
Sincerely,



Christopher Robert Brech
mmxg@telus.net