Agreed. This is a known issue with Firefox and Opera (I've never tested in Chrome) because they do not support gradients like IE does - without images. Maybe they do have this support now, I haven't checked in years. I'll leave this item open and check again after the next release to see if the appearance can be improved in FireFox, Opera and Chrome.

Your code for this feature if you wish to research more!
progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(startColorStr=#FFFFFFFF, endColorStr=#FFCBDEFF, gradientType=1); COLOR: #ababab

As far as what I have learnt this feature is not supported by other browsers or in fact other operating systems other than those by microsoft due to the nature of how the gradient is applied accessing the native library programmatically through the IE Browsers on a client machine with the library installed. You may also find that this wont work with Graphics Properties set to maximum performance.

So really at the end of the day its a feature not supported by much at all and there is not much that can be done about it apart from enjoying the benefit while in IE or since I feel generous you can have my code, Its not complete for what your doing as I dont use DocProject but you can soon work out what needs done with it.

gradient {

/* For WebKit (Safari, Google Chrome etc) /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#00f), to(#fff));

/ For Mozilla/Gecko (Firefox etc) /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #00f, #fff);

/ For Internet Explorer 5.5 - 7 /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#FFFFFFFF, endColorstr=#FFFFFFFF);

/ For Internet Explorer 8 */
-ms-filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(startColorStr=#FFFFFFFF, endColorStr=#FFCBDEFF, gradientType=1); COLOR: #ababab
}

Thanks, this looks like it will be helpful.