Transparent text cut out of background

Question

Is there any way to make a transparent text cut out of a background effect like the one in the following image, with CSS?
It would be sad to lose all pr

Answer 1

You can use myadzel's Patternizer jQuery plugin to achieve this effect across browsers. At this time, there is no cross-browser way to do this with just CSS.

You use Patternizer by adding class="background-clip" to HTML elements where you want the text to be painted as an image pattern, and specify the image in an additional data-pattern="…" attribute. See the source of the demo. Patternizer will create an SVG image with pattern-filled text and underlay it to the transparently rendered HTML element.

If, as in the question's example image, the text fill pattern should be a part of a background image extending beyond the "patternized" element, I see two options (untested, my favourite first):

• Use masking instead of a background image in the SVG. As in web-tiki's answer, to which using Patternizer will still add automatic generation of the SVG and an invisible HTML element on top that allows text selection and copying.
• Or use automatic alignment of the pattern image. Can be done with JavaScript code similar to the one in Gijs's answer.