Simulating text-stroke in Internet Explorer

Question

All browsers, with the exception of Internet Explorer (even the IE9 beta, apparently) support text-shadow, and additionally, webkit browsers seem to understand -webkit-text-stroke. But how to emulate text stroke in Internet Explorer? I've had a look at the available filters and it seems to me that none can be used to simulate this, apart maybe from Glow, but it creates a blurry glow, not a solid outline.

Is there any way to achieve this using CSS and/or Microsoft filters/behaviours and/or JavaScript?

I don't need the solution to work in ancient versions of IE, my layout isn't going to be optimised for IE7 or earlier.

Answer 1

I was looking for a cross-browser text-stroke solution that works when overlaid on background images. think I have a solution for this that doesn't involve extra mark-up, js and works in IE7-9 (I haven't tested 6), and doesn't cause aliasing problems.

This is a combination of using CSS3 text-shadow, which has good support except IE (http://caniuse.com/#search=text-shadow), then using a combination of filters for IE. CSS3 text-stroke support is poor at the moment.

IE Filters

The glow filter (http://www.impressivewebs.com/css3-text-shadow-ie/) looks terrible, so I didn't use that.

David Hewitt's answer involved adding dropshadow filters in a combination of directions. ClearType is then removed unfortunately so we end up with badly aliased text.

I then combined some of the elements suggested on useragentman with the dropshadow filters.

Putting it together

This example would be black text with a white stroke. I'm using conditional html classes by the way to target IE.

#myelement {
    color: #000000;
    text-shadow:
    -1px -1px 0 #ffffff,  
    1px -1px 0 #ffffff,
    -1px 1px 0 #ffffff,
    1px 1px 0 #ffffff;
}

html.ie7 #myelement,
html.ie8 #myelement,
html.ie9 #myelement {
    background-color: white;
    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Chroma(color='white') progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=100) progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(color=#ffffff,offX=1,offY=1) progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(color=#ffffff,offX=-1,offY=1) progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(color=#ffffff,offX=1,offY=-1) progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(color=#ffffff,offX=-1,offY=-1);
    zoom: 1;
}

Answer 2

There's this here that I dug up from a while back: http://jsfiddle.net/kovalchik/yJff9/

I can't test if it actually works or not though since I'm using a mac at the moment. It looks like a bit of a dirty hack as well. But it might be worth a try :P