There are a few other filters I'm not going to go into here. Most notable is the lights filter, which is the equivalent of hanging a stage-lighting grid for your page. Aside from the relative complexity of the filter in terms of light theory,
it requires calls out to a scripting language to make it appear. I think this is odd for a CSS attribute.
I have also heard rumors of some undocumented filters that will be included in the final release of Internet Explorer 4.0. But since I have no documentation, I can't rightly explain them to you.
Now comes the sticky part: Filters haven't exactly been accepted by the
W3C yet. They are part of Microsoft Internet Explorer but not part of Netscape
browsers. The standards body is currently debating this proposal and has yet to
come to a conclusion. My opinion is that filters are an interesting and
necessary part of creating visual presentations. They save bandwidth and
allow you to use actual text for your fancy designs rather than large text
bitmaps that you have to create to achieve the same effect.
But as these functions are not yet a part of "official" HTML, be aware
that not every browser will see them. If your layout depends on these features,
you may want to consider doing things the old-fashioned way and push yet
another GIF through the pipes.
