[davidw]

Personally, I like the latest (separate) one the best. I also like 3 and 6, but on 6, just like 2, I've seen where styles that go outside of their intended boundaries can look awful. If it is set to expand with the text, this will not happen, but if it is set to repeat or if it is static, it will have issues. 1 has its merits, but also its limitations.

On 2 I like the use of a repeating image, but as I stated above, it can have its problems if not fully tested. A texture image could work as well but I'm partial to gradients like used in the last one.

Although I'm not partial to that shade in 5, it would be more suitable to use something like that for low bandwidth users (provided the rest of the style followed suit) such as dial-up. I can see it work there. Other than that, I personally wouldn't use it. It really depends on bandwidth usage and testing to really determine that though, if the numbers aren't that much different, I don't think I'd consider it, but that's my opinion.