Text border using css (border around text)

Question

Use multiple text shadows:

text-shadow: 2px 0 0 #fff, -2px 0 0 #fff, 0 2px 0 #fff, 0 -2px 0 #fff, 1px 1px #fff, -1px -1px 0 #fff, 1px -1px 0 #fff, -1px 1px 0 #fff;

body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  background: #222;
  color: darkred;
  }
h1 {
  text-shadow: 2px 0 0 #fff, -2px 0 0 #fff, 0 2px 0 #fff, 0 -2px 0 #fff, 1px 1px #fff, -1px -1px 0 #fff, 1px -1px 0 #fff, -1px 1px 0 #fff;
}

<h1>test</h1>

Alternatively, you could use text stroke, which only works in webkit:

-webkit-text-stroke-width: 2px;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: #fff;

body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  background: #222;
  color: darkred;
  }
h1 {
  -webkit-text-stroke-width: 2px;
-webkit-text-stroke-color: #fff;
}

<h1>test</h1>

Also read more as CSS-Tricks.

Sure. You could use CSS3 text-shadow :

text-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;

However it wont show in all browsers right away. Using a script library like Modernizr will help getting it right in most browsers though.

I don't like that much solutions based on multiplying text-shadows, it's not really flexible, it may work for a 2 pixels stroke where directions to add are 8, but with just 3 pixels stroke directions became 16, and so on... Not really confortable to manage.

The right tool exists, it's SVG <text> The browsers' support problem worth nothing in this case, 'cause the usage of text-shadow has its own support problem too, filter: progid:DXImageTransform can be used or IE < 10 but often doesn't work as expected.

To me the best solution remains SVG with a fallback in not-stroked text for older browser:

This kind of approuch works on pratically all versions of Chrome and Firefox, Safari since version 3.04, Opera 8, IE 9

Compared to text-shadow whose supports are: Chrome 4.0, FF 3.5, IE 10, Safari 4.0, Opera 9, it results even more compatible.

.stroke {
  margin: 0;
  font-family: arial;
  font-size:70px;
  font-weight: bold;
  }
  
  svg {
    display: block;
  }
  
  text {
    fill: black;
    stroke: red;
    stroke-width: 3;
  }

<p class="stroke">
  <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="700" height="72" viewBox="0 0 700 72">
    <text x="0" y="70">Stroked text</text>
  </svg>
</p>

text-shadow: -1px 0 black, 0 1px black, 1px 0 black, 0 -1px black;

The following will cover all browsers worth covering:

text-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff; /* Firefox 3.5+, Opera 9+, Safari 1+, Chrome, IE10 */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Glow(Color=#ffffff,Strength=1); /* IE<10 */