CSS opacity only to background color, not the text on it?

css opacity
Jay picture Jay · Feb 27, 2011 · Viewed 1.8M times · Source

Can I assign the opacity property to the background property of a div only and not to the text on it?

I've tried:

background: #CCC;
opacity: 0.6;

but this doesn't change the opacity.

Answer

Tim Cooper picture Tim Cooper · Feb 27, 2011

It sounds like you want to use a transparent background, in which case you could try using the rgba() function:

rgba(R, G, B, A)

R (red), G (green), and B (blue) can be either <integer>s or <percentage>s, where the number 255 corresponds to 100%. A (alpha) can be a <number> between 0 and 1, or a <percentage>, where the number 1 corresponds to 100% (full opacity).

RGBa example

rgba(51, 170, 51, .1)    /*  10% opaque green */ 
rgba(51, 170, 51, .4)    /*  40% opaque green */ 
rgba(51, 170, 51, .7)    /*  70% opaque green */ 
rgba(51, 170, 51,  1)    /* full opaque green */

A small example showing how rgba can be used.

As of 2018, practically every browser supports the rgba syntax.

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