Flat input buttons in Leopard? Here's why.

After installing Leopard this afternoon one of the first things I noticed had nothing to do with the updated operating system, but rather how form input buttons appeared in Safari. The classic silver aqua look had been replaced with a flat, unattractive, style that (for me anyway) left a lot to be desired.

But then I noticed something even stranger -- not every web site had this problem. Inputs on some web sites looked like they used to, while others (including most of mine) were flat and fugly.

So I googled around, but couldn't find anything written about this. So I started messing around with my style sheets, turning attributes assigned to forms and inputs on and off, until I found the culprit: background.

Turns out in Safari 3 if you assign a background color to inputs the browser removes the aqua style button and uses the flat-button style to replicate the color you're after. So if you have flat button syndrome, kill the background color assigned to your inputs (or create a specific class for inputs that has background set to none) and you're be good to go.