In CSS2.1, the background-repeat
property had four options: no-repeat
, repeat
, repeat-x
and repeat-y
. While these are undoubtedly useful, they don’t permit finer control over the repeating process and tiles will be clipped if they don’t fit the container an exact number of times.
CSS3 introduces two new options: space
and round
…
background-repeat: space
The space
option will repeat a tile horizontally and vertically without clipping or resizing the or image, e.g.
background-repeat: space;
background-repeat: round
The round
option will repeat a tile horizontally and vertically without clipping, but the image may be resized, e.g.
background-repeat: round;
Assume we have a background image with a width 100px (actual or resized using the CSS3 background-size property). This is contained in an element with 520 horizontal pixels, so:
round(520 / 100) = round(5.2) = 5
The browser will render five images in the space but adjust the image width to 104px (520px / 5). The image is made wider to fit the container.
Differing Horizontal and Vertical Repeats
background-repeat
can be passed two values to alter the horizontal and vertical repeating, e.g.
background-repeat: round space; /* width resizes, height static */
background-repeat: space round; /* width static, height resizes */
background-repeat: space no-repeat; /* fit tiles horizontally only */
Changing the Background Position
Tiling with space
or round
will only work as you expect if the background-position
is set to 0 0. You are free to change it; the image sizes and spacing will be tiled the same but the top-left offset is moved accordingly.
Browser Compatibility
Two browsers support the space
and round
properties. Guess which ones? You’re wrong: it’s IE9 and Opera. At the time of writing, they are not implemented in Firefox, Chrome or Safari. It gets worse:
- When Firefox encounters
space
orround
it falls back torepeat
. - When Chrome or Safari encounter
space
orround
they fall back tono-repeat
. In addition, the webkit browsers appear to recognize the properties but don’t render them correctly.
Great. Thanks guys.
The only way to achieve any sort of consistency is to force Firefox to render like webkit, e.g.
#element
{
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-repeat: space;
}
Therefore:
- IE9 and Opera will correctly repeat a tile horizontally and vertically without clipping or resizing the image.
- Firefox won’t recognize
space
, falls back to theno-repeat
setting and shows a single tile. - Chrome and Safari recognize
space
but incorrectly show a single, non-repeated title.
Nasty. It might be best to wait a few more months until Mozilla and Webkit add full support for CSS3 background-repeat
.
Source Link: http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-background-repeat-space-round/