Jim-
Thanks for the review..
Basically, the arrows are transparent png files that intentionally fade to the outer edges. You should see them become more opaque when you hover over them- however, this breaks in IE7, as it doesn't handle the javascript that performs this fade in/fade out. Should work fine in FF, IE8, Opera and Safari- it's also broken in Google Chrome, because it doesn't display transparent png files as background images properly.
This gallery is built using modX CMF: link is
modxcms.com
The CMS has this gallery built into it- well, not integrated into it's core functionality, but as an "add-on" that is called a snippet in modX speak. So I didn't code "from the ground up" this gallery, but did use some other javascript libraries to do some effects: the color fade in/fade out on the links, and centering the document based on the browser window size.
Basically, poke around on the modX site. If you've never done any web dev before, you've got a bit of a learning curve ahead of you..
But at least modX is one of the simplest content management system/frameworks you can use that will just do what you want it to do based on sound htm/css/php/javascript.