You can create stroked text in CSS, but unfortunately, it is unwieldy. The existing "nonstandard" properties (-webkit-text-stroke and friends) have a very basic specification and implementations are inconsistent across browsers.
I submitted a proposal to Interop 2025 to improve this feature. Give it a vote! 👍
What are the specific problems?
The paint-order property, which controls if the stroke or the fill is on top, is buggy. And stroke alignment is not a thing in CSS. This makes it difficult to get an attractive result with the -webkit-text-stroke property.
The default is to position (paint) the stroke on top of the fill. This means that if the stroke gets wider, it swallows up the letter. You need paint-order to be consistent to avoid this mess. Ideally, you want to control the alignment of the stroke to decide how the stroke and fill co-mingle.
And since stroke alignment is a thing in design tools like Figma, some designs cannot done be with CSS! This is the perfect recipe for snarky behaviour between designers and devs! 😅
You are more likely to use a SVG for stroked text because you have more consistency and control. This is not ideal. You don't want an image in lieu of text for many reasons!
What should be done?
Alas, there is the CSS Fill and Stroke Module Level 3 Specification from the W3C that covers the same "nonstandard" properties. Sounds like a perfect thing for the Interop initiative to work on, right?
Give my proposal a read to learn more. And give it a 👍 if you'd like to see it done!
Thanks for reading.
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