IE bug: background-image and :hover kills page load status

This bug relates to anchor tags with a background-image defined on the hover pseudo-class, as follows:

a:hover{
background-image:url("yourimage.gif");
}

When the user clicks this link and then moves their mouse off of the link, Internet Explorer's page load status indicators (the wavy Windows animation in the upper right corner of the browser, as well as the status-bar at the bottom of the browser) will revert to their default states, seemingly indicating that nothing is loading. However, the requested page actually IS loading, and will appear when the process is complete.

This is most noticeable when submitting a form, or with high-latency network conditions.

There is a workaround, although it is imperfect:

a:active{
background-image:none;
}

This works well, although if the user clicks anywhere on the screen, the link will revert to its default state, and the load status indicators will go to their default states as well, showing no page load activity.

See http://www.nabu-beraterteam.de/dev/ie6-bg-img-link/ for more information. This bug may be related to the IE background-image caching flicker bug, although applying the IIS fixes did not resolve the problem for me.