Pointed/angled arrow-style borders in CSS

Question

I'm making a breadcrumb menu and attempting to do it in pure CSS so I don't have to use a background image to get an arrow shape. Is it possible to achieve this angled border style with pure CSS?

The best I have been able to do looks like this (this is just a draft screenshot I made a while ago, so please disregard that it implies that breadcrumbs are fruits and/or delicious):

I was achieving it using CSS like this:

.breadcrumb li {
    border-right: 2px solid #ECECEC;
    border-top-right-radius: 40px;
    border-bottom-right-radius: 40px;
}

Here's the whole CSS in case it helps:

div.breadcrumb {
    display: block;
    float: left;
    border-bottom: 2px solid gray;
}
ul.breadcrumb {
    display: block;
    float: left;
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
    padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.breadcrumb li {
    float: left;
    display: list-item;
    background-color: #F2F2F2;
    border-right: 2px solid #ECECEC;
    border-top-right-radius: 40px;
    border-bottom-right-radius: 40px;
    position: relative;
    padding: 9px 20px 10px 35px;
    margin-left: -32px;
}
.breadcrumb li.first-crumb {
    background: #E7E7E7;
    padding-left: 20px;
    margin-left: 0px;
}
.breadcrumb li.last-crumb {
    border-top: 1px solid #E3E3E3;
    border-right: 1px solid #E3E3E3;
    background: white;
    padding-top: 9px;
    padding-bottom: 9px;
    border-top-right-radius: 0px;
    border-bottom-right-radius: 0px;
}
.breadcrumb li:not(.first-crumb) {
    padding-left: 45px;
}
.breadcrumb li:not(.last-crumb) a:after {
    content: "\27F6";
    margin-left: 10px;
    color: #444444;
    margin-right: 0px;
}
.breadcrumb li a,
.breadcrumb li span {
    display: block;
    float: left;
    position: relative;
}
.breadcrumb li a {
    text-decoration: none;
}
.breadcrumb li.first-crumb a {
    padding-left: 0px;
    margin-left: 0px;
}

My markup looks like this:

<div class="breadcrumb">
    <ul class="breadcrumb">
        <li class="breadcrumb first-crumb"><a href="#">Produce</a></li>
        <li class="breadcrumb"><a href="#">Fruits</a></li>
        <li class="breadcrumb last-crumb"><span>breadcrumb-ilicious!</span></li>
    </ul>
</div>

Edit: It would be nice if I could get it to look like there's an actual border too. This is my crude skitch of it:

(I tried adding several triangles per Olaf's suggestion and the only thing I couldn't get to work was correcting the obvious gap between two triangles without changing the angle of the triangle poking out to form the border.)

Answer 1

Stealing from CSS Tricks - CSS Triangle, you can do something like

li.breadcrumb:after {
    content: "";
    display: inline-block;
    width: 0;
    height: 0;
    border-top: 20px solid #eee;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #eee;
    border-left: 20px solid #ccc;
}

li.breadcrumb:after {
    content: "";
    display: inline-block;
    width: 0;
    height: 0;
    border-top: 20px solid #eee;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #eee;
    border-left: 20px solid #ccc;
}
li.first-crumb:after {
    border-top: 20px solid #ccc;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #ccc;
    border-left: 20px solid #aaa;
}
li.last-crumb:after {
    border-top: 20px solid #fff;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #fff;
    border-left: 20px solid #eee;
}

li.breadcrumb {
    list-style-type: none;
    background-color: #ccc;
    display: inline-block;
    float: left;
    line-height: 0;
}
li.first-crumb {
    background: #aaa;
}
li.last-crumb {
    background: #eee;
}
li.breadcrumb a {
    text-decoration: none;
}

<div class="breadcrumb">
    <ul class="breadcrumb">
        <li class="breadcrumb first-crumb"><a href="#">Hurr</a>
        </li>
        <li class="breadcrumb"><a href="#">Durr</a>
        </li>
        <li class="breadcrumb last-crumb"><span>Furr</span>
        </li>
    </ul>
</div>
<div class="arrow-right"></div>

---

Original JSFiddle

Answer 2

you can get those borders too if you want (I have improved the previous answer by Olaf Dietsche):

HTML:

<div class="breadcrumb">
    <ul class="breadcrumb">
        <li class="breadcrumb first-crumb"><a href="#">Hurr</a></li>
        <li class="breadcrumb"><a href="#">Durr</a></li>
        <li class="breadcrumb last-crumb"><span>Furr</span></li>
    </ul>
</div>

CSS:

li.breadcrumb:before {
    content:'';
    width: 28.28427px; /* sqrt(40*40 / 2) */
    height: 28.28427px;
    background:transparent;
    position:absolute;
    -moz-transform:rotate(45deg);
    -webkit-transform:rotate(45deg);
    transform:rotate(45deg);
    transform-origin: top right;
    top: 20px;
    margin:0;
    right: 0;
    border-right: #000 solid 1px;
    border-top: #000 solid 1px;
}

li.breadcrumb:after {
    content: "";
    display: inline-block;
    width: 0;
    height: 0;
    border-top: 20px solid #eee;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #eee;
    border-left: 20px solid #ccc;
}
li.first-crumb:after {
    border-top: 20px solid #ccc;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #ccc;
    border-left: 20px solid #aaa;
}
li.last-crumb:after {
    border-top: 20px solid #fff;
    border-bottom: 20px solid #fff;
    border-left: 20px solid #eee;
}

li.breadcrumb {
    list-style-type: none;
    background-color: #ccc;
    display: inline-block;
    float: left;
    line-height: 0;
    position: relative;
    height: 40px;
}
li.first-crumb {
    background: #aaa;
}
li.last-crumb {
    background: #eee;
}
li.breadcrumb a {
    text-decoration: none;
}

and the fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/piotku/9cs1zy4h/

Answer 3

Another way to do it is to use an :after element and make this a rectangle with two borders and rotate this.

Here is an example: Breadcrumb

Main CSS:

li-item:after {
  content: "";
  width: 5rem;
  height: 100%;
  display: inline-block;
  position: absolute;
  background: transparent;
  right: 0;
  top: 0;
  transform: translateX(-1rem) rotate(45deg); 
  border-right: 4px solid white;
  border-top: 4px solid white;
}