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
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn&#8217;t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

  • By
    Write Better JavaScript with Promises

    You've probably heard the talk around the water cooler about how promises are the future. All of the cool kids are using them, but you don't see what makes them so special. Can't you just use a callback? What's the big deal? In this article, we'll...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Submit Button Enabling

    "Enabling" you ask? Yes. We all know how to disable the submit upon form submission and the reasons for doing so, but what about re-enabling the submit button after an allotted amount of time. After all, what if the user presses the "stop"...

  • By
    Duplicate DeSandro&#8217;s CSS Effect

    I recently stumbled upon David DeSandro's website when I saw a tweet stating that someone had stolen/hotlinked his website design and code, and he decided to do the only logical thing to retaliate:  use some simple JavaScript goodness to inject unicorns into their page.

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!