So then I found a reference to this blog post by Robert Nyman:

Drop shadow with CSS for all web browsers – Robert’s talk

…which includes a very simple CSS rule that seems to work in the following browsers:

• Firefox 3.5+
• Safari 3+
• Google Chrome
• Opera 10.50
• Internet Explorer 5.5+

…and here’s a quick look at the final product (with some extra commentary from yours truly…):

.shadow {
	/* firefox, mozilla, et al. */
	-moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;

	/* webkit: safari, chrome */
	-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;

	/* css3 */
	box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;

	/* For IE 8 (concatenate on one line) */
	-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(
		Strength=4, Direction=135, Color='#000000')";

	/* For IE 5.5 - 7 (concatenate on one line) */
	filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(
		Strength=4, Direction=135, Color='#000000');
}

I’m thinking that with some tweaking of the colors I can get what I’m really after, and this should integrate nicely with some relatively simple JQuery scripting as well.

We shall see… if it doesn’t work out I’ll post a follow-up.

I haven’t decided if this is going to be the permanent design, but it’s much better than the old default look I was using, especially with all the links back here regarding the iPhone wireframing templates.