How to make div background color transparent in CSS

I'm not using CSS3. So I can't use opacity or filter attributes. Without using these attributes how can I make the background-color transparent of a div? It should be kind of the text box example in this link. Here the text box background color is transparent. I want to make the same, but without using the above mentioned attributes.

The problem with opacity is that it will also affect the content, when often you do not want this to happen.

If you just want your element to be transparent, it's really as easy as :

background-color: transparent;

But if you want it to be in colors, you can use:

background-color: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.4);

Or define a background image (1px by 1px) saved with the right alpha.
(To do so, use Gimp, Paint.Net or any other image software that allows you to do that.
Just create a new image, delete the background and put a semi-transparent color in it, then save it in png.)

As said by René, the best thing to do would be to mix both, with the rgba first and the 1px by 1px image as a fallback if the browser doesn't support alpha :

background: url('img/red_transparent_background.png');
background: rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.4);

See also : http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colors_legal.asp.

Demo : My JSFiddle

Opacity gives you translucency or transparency. See an example Fiddle here.

-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)";       /* IE 8 */
filter: alpha(opacity=50);  /* IE 5-7 */
-moz-opacity: 0.5;          /* Netscape */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5;        /* Safari 1.x */
opacity: 0.5;               /* Good browsers */

Note: these are NOT CSS3 properties

See http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/cross-browser-opacity/

transparent is the default for background-color

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_background-color.asp

From https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/background-color

To set background color:

/* Hexadecimal value with color and 100% transparency*/
background-color: #11ffee00;  /* Fully transparent */

/* Special keyword values */
background-color: transparent;

/* HSL value with color and 100% transparency*/
background-color: hsla(50, 33%, 25%, 1.00);  /* 100% transparent */

/* RGB value with color and 100% transparency*/
background-color: rgba(117, 190, 218, 1.0);  /* 100% transparent */

It might be a little late to the discussion but inevitably someone will stumble onto this post like I did. I found the answer I was looking for and thought I'd post my own take on it. The following JSfiddle includes how to layer .PNG's with transparency. Jerska's mention of the transparency attribute for the div's CSS was the solution: http://jsfiddle.net/jyef3fqr/

HTML:

   <button id="toggle-box">toggle</button>
   <div id="box" style="display:none;" ><img src="x"></div>
   <button id="toggle-box2">toggle</button>
   <div id="box2" style="display:none;"><img src="xx"></div>
   <button id="toggle-box3">toggle</button>
   <div id="box3" style="display:none;" ><img src="xxx"></div>

CSS:

#box {
background-color: #ffffff;
height:400px;
width: 1200px;
position: absolute;
top:30px;
z-index:1;
}
#box2 {
background-color: #ffffff;
height:400px;
width: 1200px;
position: absolute;
top:30px;
z-index:2;
background-color : transparent;
	  }
	  #box3 {
background-color: #ffffff;
height:400px;
width: 1200px;
position: absolute;
top:30px;
z-index:2;
background-color : transparent;
	  }
 body {background-color:#c0c0c0; }

JS:

$('#toggle-box').click().toggle(function() {
$('#box').animate({ width: 'show' });
}, function() {
$('#box').animate({ width: 'hide' });
});

$('#toggle-box2').click().toggle(function() {
$('#box2').animate({ width: 'show' });
}, function() {
$('#box2').animate({ width: 'hide' });
});
$('#toggle-box3').click().toggle(function() {
$('#box3').animate({ width: 'show' });
 }, function() {
$('#box3').animate({ width: 'hide' });
});

And my original inspiration:http://jsfiddle.net/5g1zwLe3/ I also used paint.net for creating the transparent PNG's, or rather the PNG's with transparent BG's.

	/*Fully Opaque*/
	.class-name {
	  opacity:1.0;
	}

	/*Translucent*/
	.class-name {
	  opacity:0.5;
	}

	/*Transparent*/
	.class-name {
	  opacity:0;
	}

	/*or you can use a transparent rgba value like this*/
	.class-name{
	  background-color: rgba(255, 242, 0, 0.7);
	  }
	  
	/*Note - Opacity value can be anything between 0 to 1;
	Eg(0.1,0.8)etc */

Use something like

<div style='background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.4);'>

This sets the background color of said div to black, but also 40% transparent. This will not change the text or content of the divs' transparency.