I used the CSS below to hide the drop down arrow in FF, safari, chrome and added my own image to customize.
select
{
-webkit-appearance:none;
-moz-appea
The only way to accomplish this in older versions of IE is to wrap the in a slightly smaller container and set
overflow: hidden;
This would hide the arrow on the right side but still allow you to open the drop-down by clicking on it. It's messy but it's the only way to accomplish what you want.
In the past these elements have not been styleable because they were considered part of the operating system. It appears that this is becoming less of an issue now that the pseudo-elements like you mentioned are available.