Html: Sub-pixel Border

Is it possible to have a border that is thinner than 1px and works in IE6+ and is not an image and renders properly visually? Thank you.

Solution 1:

Edit: I have overseen the IE6 restriction, but I leave the answer here for others ...

Its possible with transform:scale(0.5) and put a border element with border:1px; inside. So you get a half pixel border, that (although tricked and browser dependend) is displayed on screen. But I use that trick for printing.

sure, you have to adapt the content of the element, or play with position

.outer {
  border:1px solid green;
}

.halfpix {
  -ms-transform-origin: 00;
  -webkit-transform-origin: 00;
  transform-origin: 00;
  -ms-transform:scale(0.5);
  -webkit-transform:scale(0.5);
  transform:scale(0.5);
  width:200px;
  height:100px;
  border:1px solid black;
  }

<divclass="outer"><divclass="halfpix"></div>
  zoom browser window if your browser does not display 
  </div>

Solution 2:

I think you could define the width of a border using units like em which would come out to less than 1px, and it would be valid. However, like Will Martin said, for display purposes it would just round it up or down to a whole pixel.

Solution 3:

I don't know about IE8-10 (IE6-7 definitily no go) , but in Chrome and FF I get the thinnest border with box-shadow. Works best to get a 1px <hr> instead of the autorendered 2px, but can be used on a border as well.

The thin border on the HR is more prominent in FF than Chrome, but also Chrome renders 2px.

http://jsfiddle.net/GijsjanB/3G28N/

.thin {
    border: 1px solid white;
    box-shadow: 001px black;
}

Solution 4:

No. You can't show a size smaller than one pixel because pixels are the basic unit of the monitor. And anyway, no browser I know of allows you to specify sub-pixel widths. They just get rounded up to 1px or down to 0px.

Solution 5:

Although this isn't (currently) possible in any version of IE or Edge, on the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome you can now use border width values less than 1px.

.borderTest {
	box-sizing: border-box;
	display: block;
	margin: 0.5em;
	padding: 0.5em;
	width: calc( 100% - 1em );
}
.borderTest:nth-child(1){
	border: 1px solid #000
}
.borderTest:nth-child(2){
	border: 0.75px solid #000
}
.borderTest:nth-child(3){
	border: 0.5px solid #000
}
.borderTest:nth-child(4){
	border: 0.25px solid #000
}

<divclass="borderTest">1px</div><divclass="borderTest">0.75px</div><divclass="borderTest">0.5px</div><divclass="borderTest">0.25px</div>

This outputs the following on a UHD screen: