Let's say I told you we can get the results below with just one HTML element and five CSS properties for each. No SVG, no images (save for the background on the root that's there just to make clear that our one HTML element has some transparent parts), no JavaScript. What would you think that involves?
Knockout text is a technique where words are clipped out of an element and reveal the background. In other words, you only see the background because the letters are knocking out holes. It’s appealing because it opens up typographic styles that we don’t get out of traditional CSS properties, like color.
While we’ve seen a number of ways to accomplish knockout text in the past, there are some modern CSS properties we can use now and even enhance the effect further, like transitions and animations. Let’s see them in action.
I was recently doing some client work where I used both <clippath></clippath>s and <mask></mask>s in SVG to hide and show content for animation. When I started this project, I thought I knew all of the reasons to use one over the other. But, as tends to happen, working closely with something reveals idiosyncrasies. In this post, we'll go over some of these details so that you can get productive as soon as possible.