Add padding at the beginning and end of each line of text - html

Question

I've got a span which goes over a number of lines and has a background colour. I need each of the lines to have a 10px padding at the end. The text will be dynamic so i need a css or js solution rather than just hacking it with nbsp tags (which is how I got the example pictured below)
The picture show the difference between what I have and what i want:
<h3><span class="heading">THE NEXT GENERATION OF CREATIVE TALENT</span><br/>
<span class="subhead">IT'S RIGHT HERE</span></h3>
h3 {
margin:0;
font-size: 42px;}
h3 .heading {
background-color: #000;
color: #00a3d0;}
h3 .subhead {
background-color: #00a3d0;
color: #000;}
I can't think of any way to do this with css, I was considering using javascript to find the beginning and end of each line and adding a non-breaking space.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to achieve this?
Cheers

Answer 1

I've tested this in IE8 (doesn't look too bad in IE7) and recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari.
Live Demo
Screenshot from Chrome:
It got a bit silly and, to be honest, probably more complicated than it's worth - a JS based solution would definitely be easier to understand.
There are so many gotchas with this technique.
CSS:
#titleContainer {
width: 520px
}
h3 {
margin:0;
font-size: 42px;
font-weight: bold;
font-family: sans-serif
}
h3 .heading {
background-color: #000;
color: #00a3d0;
}
h3 .subhead {
background-color: #00a3d0;
color: #000;
}
div {
line-height: 1.1;
padding: 1px 0;
border-left: 30px solid #000;
display: inline-block;
}
h3 {
background-color: #000;
color: #fff;
display: inline;
margin: 0;
padding: 0
}
h3 .indent {
position: relative;
left: -15px;
}
h3 .subhead {
padding: 0 15px;
float: left;
margin: 3px 0 0 -29px;
outline: 1px solid #00a3d0;
line-height: 1.15
}
HTML:
<div id="titleContainer">
<h3><span class="indent">
<span class="heading">THE NEXT GENERATION OF CREATIVE TALENT</span><br /><span class="subhead">IT'S RIGHT HERE</span>
</span></h3>
</div>
<!--[if IE]><style>
h3 .subhead {
margin-left: -14px
}
</style><![endif]-->

Answer 2

box-shadow makes it easy!
box-shadow:0.5em 0 0 #000,-0.5em 0 0 #000;
-moz-box-shadow:0.5em 0 0 #000,-0.5em 0 0 #000;
-webkit-box-shadow:0.5em 0 0 #000,-0.5em 0 0 #000;

Answer 3

Here’s a solution that requires each word being wrapped in an additional SPAN element:
<h3><span class="heading"><span>THE</span> <span>NEXT</span> <span>GENERATION</span <span>OF</span> <span>CREATIVE</span> <span>TALENT</span></span><br/>
<span class="subhead"><span>IT'S</span> <span>RIGHT</span> <span>HERE</span></span></h3>
Then you can style the words individually like this:
h3 span {
display: inline-block;
}
h3 > span > span {
padding: 0 0.25em;
margin: 0 -0.25em 0 0;
}
h3 .heading span {
background-color: #000;
color: #00a3d0;
}
h3 .subhead span {
background-color: #00a3d0;
color: #000;
}

Answer 4

You could do something like this. Wrap it inside a <p> and set a border-left = to the padding left you'd like to set to the span. About right padding, I don't think there will be a solution without using JS. Btw, I'm still looking for other kinds of tricks
http://www.jsfiddle.net/steweb/cYZPK/
EDIT updated starting from your markup/css http://www.jsfiddle.net/steweb/cYZPK/1/
EDIT2 (using JS..mootools) http://www.jsfiddle.net/steweb/Nn9Px/ (just tested on firefox...need to be tested on the other browsers.. explanation asap :) )

Answer 5

why not just add padding-right:10px; to the container?

Answer 6

Even if is not 100% following your design concept, I think this is the only solution if you want to stick with CSS.
h3 span {
/* cross browser inline-block */
display: -moz-inline-stack;
display: inline-block;
zoom: 1;
*display: inline;
padding:0 10px;
}
The inline-block property will make your element expand based on it's content size, so it behaves like an inline element but also have the block property which lets you apply the padding.
Hope that helps

Answer 7

Here's a way to do it without the extra mark up - though it does require an image. http://codepen.io/DeptofJeffAyer/pen/FiyIb

Answer 8

I would highly recommend using Split Lines JS: https://github.com/jeremyharris/split_lines
The issue with tags is that it wraps "inline" meaning from start to finish. So if you have a fixed width and your span automatically goes onto a second line, that line of text will be wrapped with the first line and share the span. To get around this you need to span each line of text separately. For example:
<span>line one</span>
<span>line two</span>
This isn't an easy option if the text you wish to span separately is automatically generated from Wordpress or similar... To get around this use the JQuery script above.
~
Another way to get round it (although may not be ideal) is to simply add display:block; to you spans css class:
span { display: block; background-color: #333; color: #fff; }
This will span the entire block similar to a button.
Hope this helps.