IE8 CSS Backgrounds on A:Hover

This is an odd bug, but if you try to specify a background for a link on hover (a:hover), the background may not take effect in Internet Explorer 8.  Fortunately it is an easy fix but not very obvious.

Basically make sure to specify the background in the non-hover state; if there is none, then set it to transparent.  Your CSS would then look like this:

a {
background-color:transparent;
}
a:hover {
background-color:#CCC; /* or whatever color you want */
}

Hopefully this saves some time for someone out there.  It took a while of playing around to finally get it working but ah well.