Transparent text with a border html/css

Question

So I have been searching, and maybe I am not searching correctly or the answers aren't making sense to me. I want to have completely transparent text with a visible border around it.

So far, this is what I have:

{
    font-family: Arial Black,Arial Bold,Gadget,sans-serif;
    color: white;
    opacity: 0.4;
    font-size: 80px;
    margin-left: 25px;
    text-shadow: -1px 0 black, 0 1px black, 1px 0 black, 0 -1px black;
}

The problem with this is lowering the opacity to allow the background through is also drastically reducing the border making the text harder to read. I know that doing this will make it difficult anyway, but the fading border is not helping. Any help on this is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Use rgba() value for the color property.

div {
  font-family: Arial Black, Arial Bold, Gadget, sans-serif;
  color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.4);
  font-size: 80px;
  margin-left: 25px;
  text-shadow: -1px 0 black, 0 1px black, 1px 0 black, 0 -1px black;
}

<div>Some text</div>

---

Or you could use a :pseudo-element.

div {
  position: relative;
  font-family: Arial Black, Arial Bold, Gadget, sans-serif;
  font-size: 80px;
  margin-left: 25px;
  text-shadow: -1px 0 black, 0 1px black, 1px 0 black, 0 -1px black;
}
div:after {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left:0;
  content: 'Some text';
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  font-family: Arial Black, Arial Bold, Gadget, sans-serif;
  color: white;
  opacity: 0.4;
  font-size: 80px;
  z-index: 1;
  pointer-events: none;
}

<div>Some text</div>

Or you could use svg.

body, html {
  height: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  background: url(http://lorempixel.com/500/200/) no-repeat;
}

<svg width="400" height="100">
  <text fill="white" fill-opacity="0.4" font-size="80" x="200" y="70" text-anchor="middle" stroke="black">Some Text</text>
</svg>