It will be resolved by next year (hopefully)

But it's just HTML and CSS and people are not even trying it out.

Nay, that problem will require jscript. You can hide the arrow using css overlay, but how are you going to drop down the arrow without jscript?

We can try doing some hacks even using HTML 5 webkit.... Likely scenario to be faced is that some browsers are not yet updated with the latest webkit pack... Let's still try and see if we can form our solution. Reason why I said it's a collaborative effort and not a one man to solve all.

frankly its best from experience not to mix html5 and legacy browser support in the same page,build your html5 as a seperate module and non-html5 apps as seperate module if you are not into frameworks but jQuey mobile has degrading features to cover non-html5 elements not sure why you want to go thru the stress of styling select , its lot more easier to use default than start hacking it if no library can work on that.thats my honest opinion and select is hard to emulate on cross browser without js, and even if its that's too much stress and time.

Just go over to the thread and let's try something out first of all