Transparent layer of text over an image - html

Question

I have the following markup:
<div class="photo" style="float: left; margin: 2px;">
<a href="#">
<img src="images/image.jpg" alt="My Image" height="240" width="240" />
</a>
</div>
How can I create a layer on top of the image where I can write some text? The layer should have transparency, be aligned to bottom and having a size of 240x60?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Why not make the image a background?
<div class="photo" style="float:left; margin:2px">
<a href="#" style="background:url('images/image.jpg');
width:240px; height:240px; display:inline-block;">Your text here</a>
</div>
The display:inline-block allows you to apply width and height to an otherwise inline element, but here you might even want to just use display:block since it's the only child of the container.
EDIT: You can even put more containers in it, something like this:
<div class="photo" style="float:left; margin:2px">
<a href="#" style="background:url('images/image.jpg'); position:relative;
width:240px; height:240px; display:block;">
<span style="display:block;position:absolute;bottom:0;left:0;right:0;
background:white;background:rgba(255,255,255,0.25);">Your text here</span>
</a>
</div>

Answer 2

Text blocks over images. Website and demo as follows:
http://css-tricks.com/text-blocks-over-image/

Answer 3

I'll do it like with an image container like that :
Html
<div class="image-container">
<img src="path/to/image" />
<p class="caption">My text</p>
</div>
CSS
.image-container {
position:relative;
}
.caption {
width:100%;
background:rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
color:#ffffff;
position:absolute;
top:0;
}
See fiddle !

Answer 4

Markup
<div class="figure-container">
<img src="http://ipadwallsdepot.com/detail/solid-color_00015061.jpg" width="250" height="250" />
<span class="figure-label">FIG 1.1: Caption Text Here</span>
</div>
<div class="figure-container">
<img src="http://ipadwallsdepot.com/detail/solid-color_00015061.jpg" width="250" height="250" />
<span class="figure-label">FIG 1.2: Another Caption Here</span>
</div>
Stylesheet
.figure-container
{
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
}
.figure-label
{
position: absolute;
bottom: 10px;
right: 10px;
color: White
}
I created a JSFiddle here http://jsfiddle.net/AbBKx/ showing how to absolutely position a child element (label) relative to a parent container.