CSS technique for a horizontal line with words in

Question

I'm trying to make a horizontal rule with some text in the middle. For example:

----------------------------------- my title here -----------------------------

Is there a way to do that in CSS? Without all the "-" dashes obviously.

Answer 1

I've been looking around for some solutions for this simple decoration and I've found quite a few ones, some weird, some even with JS to calculate the height of the font and bla,bla,bla, then I've read the one on this post and read a comment from thirtydot speaking about fieldset and legend and I thought that was it.

I'm overriding those 2 elements styles, I guess you could copy the W3C standards for them and include it on your .middle-line-text class (or whatever you want to call it) but this is what I did:

<fieldset class="featured-header">
    <legend>Your text goes here</legend>
</fieldset>

<style>
.featured-header{
    border-bottom: none;
    border-left: none;
    border-right: none;
    text-align: center;
 }

.featured-header legend{
    -webkit-padding-start: 8px; /* It sets the whitespace between the line and the text */
    -webkit-padding-end: 8px; 
    background: transparent; /** It's cool because you don't need to fill your bg-color as you would need to in some of the other examples that you can find (: */
    font-weight: normal; /* I preffer the text to be regular instead of bold  */
    color: YOU_CHOOSE;
}   

</style>

Here's the fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/legnaleama/3t7wjpa2/

I've played with the border styles and it also works in Android ;) (Tested on kitkat 4.XX)

EDIT:

Following Bekerov Artur's idea which is a nice option too, I've changed the .png base64 image to create the stroke with an .SVG so you can render in any resolution and also change the colour of the element without any other software involved :)

/* SVG solution based on Bekerov Artur */
/* Flexible solution, scalable, adaptable and also color customizable*/
.stroke {
background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' xmlns:xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink' x='0px' y='0px' width='1px' height='1px' viewBox='0 0 1 1' enable-background='new 0 0 1 1' fill='%23ff6600' xml:space='preserve'><rect width='1' height='1'/></svg>");
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-position: left;
text-align: center;
}
.stroke h3 {
background-color: #ffffff;
margin: 0 auto;
padding:0 10px;
display: inline-block;
font-size: 66px;
}

Answer 2

Ok, this one is more complicated but it works in everything but IE<8

<div><span>text TEXT</span></div>

div {
    text-align: center;
    position: relative;
}
span {
    display: inline-block;    
}
span:before,
span:after {
    border-top: 1px solid black;
    display: block;
    height: 1px;
    content: " ";
    width: 40%;
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    top: 1.2em;
}
span:after {
   right: 0;  
   left: auto; 
}

The :before and :after elements are positioned absolutely so we can pull one to the left and one to the right. Also, the width (40% in this case) is very dependent of the width of the text inside.. have to think about a solution for that. At least the top: 1.2em makes sure the lines stay more or less in the center of the text even if you have different font size.

It does seem to work well though: http://jsfiddle.net/tUGrf/3/

Answer 3

this is roughly how i'd do it: the line is created by setting a border-bottom on the containing h2 then giving the h2 a smaller line-height. The text is then put in a nested span with a non-transparent background.

HTML:

<h2><span>THIS IS A TEST</span></h2>
<p>this is some content other</p>

CSS:

h2 {
   width: 100%; 
   text-align: center; 
   border-bottom: 1px solid #000; 
   line-height: 0.1em;
   margin: 10px 0 20px; 
} 

h2 span { 
    background:#fff; 
    padding:0 10px; 
}

I tested in Chrome only, but there's no reason it shouldn't work in other browsers.

JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/7jGHS/

Answer 4

If anyone is wondering how to set the heading such that it appears with a fixed distance to the left side (and not centered as presented above), I figured that out by modifying @Puigcerber's code.

h1 {
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
}

h1:before, 
h1:after {
  background-color: #000;
  content: "";
  display: inline-block;
  height: 1px;
  position: relative;
  vertical-align: middle;
}

h1:before {
  right: 0.3em;
  width: 50px;
}

h1:after {
  left: 0.3em;
  width: 100%;
}

Here the JSFiddle.

Answer 5

From so many alternatives I would prefer this answer as it multi cross the nowadays browsers.

I use it more than one of my homepage. As it is advised to only have a single <h1> especially on the main page. So it is necessary to change h1 to h2 or higher.

h2 {margin-top:50px;
  display:flex;
  background:linear-gradient(to left,gray,lightgray,white,yellow,turquoise);;
}
h2:before, h2:after {
  color:white;
  content:'';
  flex:1;
  border-bottom:groove 2px;
  margin:auto 0.25em;
  box-shadow: 0 -1px ;/* ou 0 1px si border-style:ridge */
}

<h2>side lines via flex</h2>

Answer 6

for later(nowdays) browser , display:flex andd pseudo-elements makes it easy to draw . border-style, box-shadow and even background helps too for the makeup.

h1 {margin-top:50px;
  display:flex;
  background:linear-gradient(to left,gray,lightgray,white,yellow,turquoise);;
}
h1:before, h1:after {
  color:white;
  content:'';
  flex:1;
  border-bottom:groove 2px;
  margin:auto 0.25em;
  box-shadow: 0 -1px ;/* ou 0 1px si border-style:ridge */
}

<h1>side lines via flex</h1>