Create a “inset” effect using CSS in websites

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3045808

Question

I am very much impressed by the "inset" like effect in many latest websites. Some examples are alt text

and

alt text

The line in the center. Nowadays, many websites use these kinds of lines/effects.

I tried to achieve the same with borders but the color combination is not working me and it is not proper.

Do other websites use images for these ? is it easy to this ?

Any example css ?

Example sites: http://woothemes.com, http://net.tutsplus.com/ , http://www.w3schools.com (in the header) and in wordpress admin page sidebar

Was it helpful?

Solution

Don't know if this will help, but using 1 px borders that are slightly lighter and darker than the background of 2 adjacent elements can emulate this. For Example:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <title>Untitled</title>
<style type="text/css">
div{background:#555;}
.top{border-bottom:#333 solid 1px;}
.bot{border-top:#777 solid 1px;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="top">this</div>
<div class="bot">andthis</div>
</body>
</html>

EDIT:

As a side note, switching light and dark in the example above will give you a slightly raised/embossed border effect.

OTHER TIPS

Using an <hr> is quite clever.

Following up on user1302036’s answer, all we need is to set the color of the top and bottom borders for an <hr> and set the left and right border widths to 0.

hr {
  border-width: 1px 0px;
  border-color: #666 transparent #ccc transparent;
}

Use border-bottom and box-shadow.

body {
  background-color: #D0D9E0;
}

h1 {
  border-bottom: 1px solid #EFF2F6;
  box-shadow: inset 0 -1px 0 0 #AFBCC6;
}

Check out the Fiddle and Browser Compatibility for box-shadow property.

3D effects in 2D computer displays are mere optical effects accomplished by the use of colour: lighter variations suggest bright (higher areas) and darker variations suggest shadown (lower areas). Most people is right-handed and writing lights tend to be on the left side of the desktop, so you use an imaginary source of light in the left top corner of the screen.

It's been possible to do it with pure CSS in rectangular areas for years:

body{
	background-color: #8080C0;
}
div{
  display: inline-block;
	margin: 1em;
	padding: 1em;
	width: 25%;
	color: white;
	background-color: #8080C0;
}
div.outset{
	border-width: 1px;
	border-style: solid;
	border-color: #A6A6D2 #4D4D9B #4D4D9B #A6A6D2;
}
div.inset{
	border-width: 1px;
	border-style: solid;
	border-color: #4D4D9B #A6A6D2 #A6A6D2 #4D4D9B;
}
<div class="inset">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</div>
<div class="outset">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit</div>

Fonts, however, require newer CSS attributes that don't have wide support yet and, also, do not allow to provide more than one colour, so it's common to use images. See http://www.quirksmode.org/css/textshadow.html

this is css text shadow property.for get this effect use 

.style{
    text-shadow:0 1px #FFFFFF;
}

but really this is effect of color combination that you are using in background and text. so you should do.

  1. use text shadow color dark than background color.
  2. use text shadow color light than text color.

Easiest, draw an horizontal rule

with the following styles, contrast can be modified depending on background color:

hr {
background-color: #000;
border-top: solid 1px #999;
border-left: none;  
height:0px;
}

Here is a more current and flexible solution that can be used.

JSFIDDLE

.hr {
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
  height: 1px;
  width: 100%;
  display: block;
  border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.6);
}

<span class="hr"></span>

By using RGBA(Red, Green, Blue, Alpha) you can use white/black with an alpha(opacity) to make the illusion of an inset effect.

Simply do the following:

.hr {
  opacity: 0.2;
  border-top: 1px solid #000;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #fff;
}

Play with opacity and colors to suit your design, It works on all backgrounds I think ;)

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