Set opacity of background image without affecting child elements

Question

Is it possible to set the opacity of a background image without affecting the opacity of child elements?

Example

All links in the footer need a custom bull

Answer 1

To really fine-tune things, I recommend placing the appropriate selections in browser-targeting wrappers. This was the only thing that worked for me when I could not get IE7 and IE8 to "play nicely with others" (as I am currently working for a software company who continues to support them).

/* color or background image for all browsers, of course */            
#myBackground {
    background-color:#666; 
}
/* target chrome & safari without disrupting IE7-8 */
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {
    #myBackground {
        -khtml-opacity:.50; 
        opacity:.50;
    }
}
/* target firefox without disrupting IE */
@-moz-document url-prefix() {
    #myBackground {
        -moz-opacity:.50;
        opacity:0.5;
    }
}
/* and IE last so it doesn't blow up */
#myBackground {
    opacity:.50;
    filter:alpha(opacity=50);
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=0.5);
}

I may have redundancies in the above code -- if anyone wishes to clean it up further, feel free!