Terry:
The VML does not render at all in FireFox - just scattered snippets of text show up.
Dave:
I saved your HTML file to a local text file and viewed it using IE 6 and still couldn't get the end nodes to dim. This may be a problem with my development machine which has everything in the world installed. In other words, I wouldn't consider my workstation indicative of what your user base will be running so I wouldn't worry about what I do or don't see.
Thanks again for sharing your VML demo. Cool stuff!
Malcolm