CSS opacity goes over other layers

Question

I have a question...I have my header class like this

.header{
    background-color:#626262;
    width:250px;
    height:745px;
    opacity:0.4;
    filter:alpha(opacity=40); /* For IE8 and earlier */
}

inside this class I have these classes...

.logo{
    background-color:#626262;
    opacity:1.0;
    filter:alpha(opacity=100); /* For IE8 and earlier */
    color:#FFF;
    font-size:28px;
    padding-top:125px;
    margin-left:20px;
}

.navigation{
    background-color:#626262;
    opacity:1.0;
    filter:alpha(opacity=100); /* For IE8 and earlier */
    color:#FFF;
    margin-left:20px;
    text-align:left;
    margin-bottom: 125px;
}

.navigation ul{
    list-style:none;
    padding-left:0;
    padding-top:35px;
}

.navigation ul li{
    padding-bottom:20px;
    font-size:24px;
}

.navigation li a{
    color:#FFF;
    text-decoration:none;
}

.social{
    width:100%;
    font-size:18px;
    height: 50px;
    line-height: 72px;
    padding-right: 10px;
}

.social ul {
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0 0 0 8px;
}

.social li {
    float: left;
}

.social ul .facebook a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    display: block;
    text-decoration: none;
    background-image: url(http://jamessuske.com/karl/images/facebook.png);
    background-position: center right;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    padding-right:65px;
}

.social ul .facebook a:hover {
    background-image: url(http://jamessuske.com/karl/images/facebook_hover.png);
}

.social ul .twitter a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    display: block;
    text-decoration: none;
    background-image: url(http://jamessuske.com/karl/images/twitter.png);
    background-position: center right;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    padding-right:70px;
}

.social ul .twitter a:hover {
    background-image: url(http://jamessuske.com/karl/images/twitter_hover.png);
}

.social ul .pinterest a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    display: block;
    text-decoration: none;
    background-image: url(http://jamessuske.com/karl/images/pinterest.png);
    background-position: center right;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    padding-right:70px;
}

.social ul .pinterest a:hover {
    background-image: url(http://jamessuske.com/karl/images/pinterest_hover.png);
}

And those layers are faded to the opacity of 0.4....my question is how do I get those over layers not to be faded with opacity of 0.4? I hope this makes sense...an example of this would be at http://www.yourthirdeye.ca/

Answer 1

If it's just for a partially transparent background, you can use rgba(), like this:

.header{
    background-color: #626262;
    background-color: rgba(98, 98, 98, 0.4);
    width:250px;
    height:745px;
}

This won't work in older browsers (e.g. IE8 and earlier), so that's why the background-color is set twice - the first is a fallback.

There are also some css tricks that you can use - but they have drawbacks. If the above solution works for you, I'd go with that.

If not, these links should get you started:

http://css-tricks.com/non-transparent-elements-inside-transparent-elements/

http://www.impressivewebs.com/css-opacity-that-doesnt-affect-child-elements/