Is it possible, using CSS only, to make the background
of an element semi-transparent but have the content (text & images) of the element opaque?
I'd like to accomplish this without having the text and the background as two separate elements.
When trying:
p {
position: absolute;
background-color: green;
filter: alpha(opacity=60);
opacity: 0.6;
}
span {
color: white;
filter: alpha(opacity=100);
opacity: 1;
}
<p>
<span>Hello world</span>
</p>
It looks like child elements are subjected to the opacity of their parents, so opacity:1
is relative to the opacity:0.6
of the parent.
Here's how I do this (it might not be optimal, but it works):
Create the
div
that you want to be semi-transparent. Give it a class/id. Leave it EMPTY, and close it. Give it a set height and width (say, 300 pixels by 300 pixels). Give it an opacity of 0.5 or whatever you like, and a background color.Then, DIRECTLY BELOW that div, create another div with a different class/id. Create a paragraph inside it, where you'll place your text. Give the
div
position: relative, and top:-295px
(that's NEGATIVE 295 pixels). Give it a z-index of 2 for good measure, and make sure its opacity is 1. Style your paragraph as you like, but make sure the dimensions are less than that of the firstdiv
so it doesn't overflow.That's it. Here's the code:
This works in Safari 2.x, I don't know about Internet Explorer.
In order to make the background of an element semi-transparent but have the content (text & images) of the element opaque. You need to write css code for that image and you have to add one attribute called opacity with minimum value. e.g.
// lesser the value more will be transparency, ore the value less will be transparency.
In Firefox 3 and Safari 3, you can use RGBA like Georg Schölly mentioned.
A little known trick is that you can use it in Internet Explorer as well using the gradient filter.
The first hex number defines the alpha value of the color.
Full solution all browsers:
This is from CSS background transparency without affecting child elements, through RGBa and filters.
Screenshots proof of results:
This is when using the following code:
For a simple semi-transparent background color, the above solutions (CSS3 or bg images) are the best options. However, if you want to do something fancier (e.g. animation, multiple backgrounds, etc.), or if you don't want to rely on CSS3, you can try the “pane technique”:
The technique works by using two “layers” inside of the outer pane element:
The
position: relative
on pane is important; it tells back layer to fit to the pane's size. (If you need the<p>
tag to be absolute, change the pane from a<p>
to a<span>
and wrap all that in a absolutely-position<p>
tag.)The main advantage this technique has over similar ones listed above is that the pane doesn't have to be a specified size; as coded above, it will fit full-width (normal block-element layout) and only as high as the content. The outer pane element can be sized any way you please, as long as it's rectangular (i.e. inline-block will work; plain-old inline will not).
Also, it gives you a lot of freedom for the background; you're free to put really anything in the back element and have it not affect the flow of content (if you want multiple full-size sub-layers, just make sure they also have position: absolute, width/height: 100%, and top/bottom/left/right: auto).
One variation to allow background inset adjustment (via top/bottom/left/right) and/or background pinning (via removing one of the left/right or top/bottom pairs) is to use the following CSS instead:
As written, this works in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, IE8+, and Opera, although IE7 and IE6 require extra CSS and expressions, IIRC, and last time I checked, the second CSS variation does not work in Opera.
Things to watch out for:
<div>
s instead of<span>
s to simplify your CSS.A fuller demo, showing off the flexiblity of this technique by using it in tandem with
display: inline-block
, and with bothauto
& specificwidth
s/min-height
s:And here's a live demo of the technique being used extensively:
Opacity of background, but not the text has some ideas. Either use a semi-transparent image, or overlay an additional element.
You can solve this for Internet Explorer 8 by (ab)using the gradient syntax. The color format is ARGB. If you are using the Sass preprocessor you can convert colors using the built-in function "ie-hex-str()".