Lots of things were different on the front end back then:
- IE was an albatross around every web developers neck
- Even better browsers like Firefox and Safari had tons of inconsistencies
- jQuery and Prototype weren't around yet
- CSS is not remotely close to what it is today
Honestly, placing text over an image was a lofty task back then. We used to use lots of images with text as part of the image. Text images and table layouts were two of the main ways to get around all those cross-browser issues.
- IE was an albatross around every web developers neck - Even better browsers like Firefox and Safari had tons of inconsistencies - jQuery and Prototype weren't around yet - CSS is not remotely close to what it is today
Honestly, placing text over an image was a lofty task back then. We used to use lots of images with text as part of the image. Text images and table layouts were two of the main ways to get around all those cross-browser issues.