Color every character differently

Question

I am using KK Countdown to countdown to Xmas for a site.

I have a design which I have to follow that has each letter of the day countown with a blue background and border radius.

Right now the html is output like this

<span class="kkcount-down" data-time="1387929600">
     <span class="kkcountdown-box">
          <span class="kkc-dni">169</span>
          <span class="kkc-dni-text">DAYS </span>
          <span class="kkc-godz">23</span>
          <span class="kkc-godz-text"> </span>
          <span class="kkc-min">19</span>
          <span class="kkc-min-text"> </span>
          <span class="kkc-sec">48</span>
          <span class="kkc-sec-text">HOURS</span>
     </span>
</span>

The class kkc-dni is the part I am trying to target here.

I want to add a background colour to each letter inside that span.

Preferably with CSS. Is this possible?

I have used CSS before to style the first letter of paragraphs before but this is quite different and I cannot find any information on it.

Any suggestions?

Note: Because I am using a plugin to do this countdown I am not sure if I can change the way it outputs the spans and html. If I could wrap each letter in a span I would.

Answer 1

I want to add a background colour to each letter inside that span.

Using an array of colors:

const colors = ["#0bf", "#f0b", "#fb0", "#b0f"];

$('.kkc').find('span').each(function() {

  const text = $(this).text();
  const len = text.length;
    
  const newCont = [...text].reduce((a, ch, i) => 
    a + `<span style="background:${colors[i % colors.length]}">${ch}</span>`, ""
  );

  $(this).html(newCont);

});

.kkcountdown-box>span>span {
  background: red;
}

<div class="kkc">
  <span class="kkc-dni">169</span>
  <span class="kkc-dni-text">DAYS </span>
  <span class="kkc-godz">23</span>
  <span class="kkc-godz-text"> </span>
  <span class="kkc-min">19</span>
  <span class="kkc-min-text"> </span>
  <span class="kkc-sec">48</span>
  <span class="kkc-sec-text">HOURS</span>
</div>

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

The above will, wrapping every single letter into a separate span will also add a background color from your Array list of colors.
Once the colors list end is reached will start from the first one and so on.

Using a random color:

$('.kkc').find('span').each(function() {

  const text = $(this).text();
  const len = text.length;
    
  const newCont = [...text].reduce((a, ch, i) => {
    const color= '#'+ (Math.random() * 0xffffff).toString(16).substr(-6); 
    return a + `<span style="background:${color}">${ch}</span>`
  }, "");

  $(this).html(newCont);

});

.kkcountdown-box>span>span {
  background: red;
}

<div class="kkc">
  <span class="kkc-dni">169</span>
  <span class="kkc-dni-text">DAYS </span>
  <span class="kkc-godz">23</span>
  <span class="kkc-godz-text"> </span>
  <span class="kkc-min">19</span>
  <span class="kkc-min-text"> </span>
  <span class="kkc-sec">48</span>
  <span class="kkc-sec-text">HOURS</span>
</div>

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.5.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

The above will get every letter inside a <span> and wrap it into a new span with a randomly generated background color.

Answer 2

You cannot style each letter of word without individually wrapping characters. This is the simple answer to the question, especially as asked in the the title.

However, the wrapping can be done with server-side scripting, or with client-side scripting. If this is acceptable, you should reformulate your question.