That is, the left and bottom borders of the element need to give a 3d effect of it popping out. Is there a good, purely-CSS way to accomplish this effect?
I found this question while trying to figure this out as well, and I think what you're looking for is something like this http://jsfiddle.net/9Lt2477w/.
.raisedbox {
padding: 10px;
border: 1px solid #77aaff;
box-shadow: -1px 1px #77aaff,
-2px 2px #77aaff,
-3px 3px #77aaff,
-4px 4px #77aaff,
-5px 5px #77aaff;
}
Thanks to http://sam-morrow.com/playground/css-cubes.py for the help here. I didn't realize you could just keep adding additional lines into the box-shadow property.