How can I add a large faded text background via css?

Question

I'm looking to create a Zune/Microsoft-style oversized title in CSS so that a div has a semi-transparent text behind it.

Any ideas? I'm hoping to keep it as unreliant on plugins and images as possible — but it's important that the text can overflow (invisibly), and that it can be changed (probably by JS). It must be able to overflow slightly without appearing outside the div; that is, notice the bottom of the "text" letters; this is the equivalent of setting bottom: -5px; in CSS.

This is what I'm considering:

#about_big {
    font-family: "Proxima Light", sans-serif;
    font-size: 2000%;
    color: rgba(100, 100, 100, .5);
    overflow: hidden;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
    position: absolute;
}

...inside an about div that is also overflow: hidden; but... Alas. It does not hide.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I understand that an answer has been accepted for your question already, but I thought I could provide my two cents, just for the sake of completeness.

While there is no inherent problem with creating an additional <div> element to hold the text, I prefer using the ::after pseudo-element to create one. It's probably (IMHO) more semantically correct, but it really depends what purpose you want the text to serve as.

In my example, I have placed the text you want to appear in the background in a HTML data- attribute, say, data-bg-text:

<div class="bg-text" data-bg-text="text">
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi eu quam dolor, et aliquet lectus.
</div>

And for your CSS, you simply have to create a pseudo-element, and assign content from the custom HTML data- attribute:

.bg-text {
    background-color: #aaa;
    overflow: hidden;
    padding: 20px 20px 100px 20px;
    position: relative;
    width: 400px;
}
.bg-text::after {
    color: #fff;
    content: attr(data-bg-text);
    display: block;
    font-size: 80px;
    line-height: 1;
    position: absolute;
    bottom: -15px;
    right: 10px;
}

See the fiddle here - http://jsfiddle.net/teddyrised/n58D9/ or check the proof-of-concept example below:

.bg-text {
    background-color: #aaa;
    padding: 20px 20px 100px 20px;
    position: relative;
    width: 400px;
    overflow: hidden;
}
.bg-text::after {
    color: #000;
    content: attr(data-bg-text);
    display: block;
    font-size: 80px;
    line-height: 1;
    position: absolute;
    bottom: -15px;
    right: 10px;
}

<div class="bg-text" data-bg-text="text">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi eu quam dolor, et aliquet lectus.</div>