Facebook Share and Like Button Customization Issues

My goal was to get a customized Facebook Like button working. Our designer gave us a mockup of a Facebook button which didn’t have the word Like in it, no counter or anything else except the f in a rounded-corner box Facebook logo. It was very difficult to customize it since code you insert into your HTML DOM is an iframe and Facebook does all it can to prevent you from changing the style of their code, in order to replace their background image. Because Facebook Like button options didn’t match my needs, I resorted to using the Facebook Share button. The Facebook Like button information can be found here Facebook Like Button.

The Facebook Share button is deprecated but still works, though Facebook no longer supports it. Information on that can be found at Facebook Share Button. I used the fb_share type of ‘icon’ which is the type of icon I was interested.

Has anyone solved the problem of customizing the Facebook Like icon, without a counter and without displaying anything else but a simple 18×18 pixel Facebook icon? I tried to modify the background image within Facebook’s iframe via css and JavaScript with no luck. I wasn’t even able to do this with the Firebug console.