You are right it degrades gracefully in non IE browsers.
I think it's strange that there is no other solution for this although there should be with CSS 3 (if that will ever get "released")
You can use an image (<IMG>) and set the width and height to 100%, but the gradient looks quite awfull.

If SVG gets full support this would open up a lot of new possibilities, just have a look at this:
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<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
<defs>
<linearGradient id="red_black" x1="0%" y1="0%" x2="0%" y2="100%">
<stop offset="0%" style="stop-color:rgb(255,0,0);stop-opacity:1"/>
<stop offset="100%" style="stop-color:rgb(255,255,255);stop-opacity:1"/>
</linearGradient>
</defs>
<rect width="100%" height="100%" style="fill:url(#red_black)"/>
</svg>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(copy the code to a file called test.svg and open it in your browser)

Very nice, but I didn't manage to set it to 100% in the browser if included in HTML....

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"I'd settle for a full adpotion of css2" > I agree, but there should be  a lot of improvements for CSS 3 that would be very handy. and wi'll have to wait a few years before all browsers support it so the sooner the better....

" Edit: Just noticed that using this DX effect has the side effect of removing the extra extra weight that IE7 seems to apply to all text to the extent that the page now looks just like it does in FireFox."

Ehh, you mean the gradient DX has influence on the way the text is rendered...?

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