CSS Text Overlap

By  on  

One of the important functions of CSS is to position elements. Margin, padding, top, left, right, bottom, position, and z-index are just a few of the major players in CSS positioning. By using the above spacing properties and the z-index "layering" property, we can make your elements overlap each other.

The XHTML

<div id="element-1" class="element">David</div>
<div id="element-2" class="element">Walsh</div>
<div id="element-3" class="element">Blog</div>
<div id="element-4" class="element">Showing</div>
<div id="element-5" class="element">CSS</div>
<div id="element-6" class="element">Overlap</div>

Just a bunch of elements with text only. Simple.

The CSS

.element		{ font-size:75px; position:absolute; }
#element-1		{ color:lightblue; z-index:1; }
#element-2		{ color:lightgreen; margin:30px 0 0 30px; z-index:2; }
#element-3		{ color:pink; margin:60px 0 0 60px; z-index:3; }
#element-4		{ color:yellow; margin:90px 0 0 90px; z-index:4; }
#element-5		{ color:orange; margin:120px 0 0 120px; z-index:5; }
#element-6		{ color:gray; margin:150px 0 0 150px; z-index:6; }

/* worded colors? awful! */

The major players in the CSS are the absolute positioning, the margin property, and the z-index.

As lovely as the overlap is, CSS is still limited to the "safe" fonts, so text-only imagery is still necessary when we want to use "fun" fonts.

Recent Features

  • By
    Facebook Open Graph META Tags

    It's no secret that Facebook has become a major traffic driver for all types of websites.  Nowadays even large corporations steer consumers toward their Facebook pages instead of the corporate websites directly.  And of course there are Facebook "Like" and "Recommend" widgets on every website.  One...

  • By
    Conquering Impostor Syndrome

    Two years ago I documented my struggles with Imposter Syndrome and the response was immense.  I received messages of support and commiseration from new web developers, veteran engineers, and even persons of all experience levels in other professions.  I've even caught myself reading the post...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Assign Anchor IDs Using MooTools 1.2

    One of my favorite uses of the MooTools JavaScript library is the SmoothScroll plugin. I use it on my website, my employer's website, and on many customer websites. The best part about the plugin is that it's so easy to implement. I recently ran...

  • By
    CSS Filters

    CSS filter support recently landed within WebKit nightlies. CSS filters provide a method for modifying the rendering of a basic DOM element, image, or video. CSS filters allow for blurring, warping, and modifying the color intensity of elements. Let's have...

Discussion

  1. I’m pretty sure this isn’t using z-index, since you aren’t setting it anywhere. And since you’re not setting it, the elements are just being stacked according to document flow. If this is what you want then the position absolute is unnecessary. You can just use negative top margins to overlap the elements and get the added benefit of maintaining flow in case you want to put something else after these divs.

  2. Ditto,

    I was expecting to see something using Z-index and was going to see how compatible it is across various browsers.

  3. I created the original file and then forgot to update a few text items when I had concluded z-index wasn’t necessary. Don’t worry though — I have some Moo and jQuery that will really accentuate the z-index.

  4. Jeff Hartman

    # /* worded colors? awful! */

    Why are worded colors awful?

  5. Thank you so much for this code. I spent hours on working on something like this and came up with issues with text all over the place.

    This helped a lot.

  6. Using for a CANCELLED display. Thanks!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!