Weird gradient border effect

Question

When applying a transparent border over an element with a linear-gradient as the background, I get a weird effect.

Answer 1

That's because the starting and ending points of the gradient are at the edges of the padding-box and border is rendered outside the padding-box. So, the borders look funny because the background is repeated on each side outside the padding-box to cover the border-box.

The box-shadow:inset is rendered inside the padding-box (just like background) and gives visually the same effect as a border, so you could try using that in place of border:

box-shadow: inset 0 0 0 10px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
padding: 10px;

Because a box-shadow doesn't take up any space, you need to increase your padding accordingly.

Illustration of padding-box and border-box:

Demo http://jsfiddle.net/ilpo/fzndodgx/5/