Control

Block tag

and an inline tag in some text

The control group. The elements in this group just have basic styles and a gradient filter applied (filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorStr='#44ddbb', EndColorStr='#000000');). In IE7 both of these have a gray background.

Test

Block tag

and an inline tag in some text

The elements in this group have a width set, in the case of the block tag it happens to be 100%, but any will cause the desired effect. The inline has its display set to inline-block, and no alterations to its width (although setting a width does not break the gradient).