Sites4All Limited - Web Development
Demonstration of Technique to Fill a Circle with Text
This technique
uses a server-side PHP
script to split the text into
lines of approximately the right
length, then calculates the correct
amount of CSS 'letter-spacing' to apply
to each line to fine-tune its length.

This will only work well if you choose a
monospace font such as 'courier new'. Effect
varies with browser and platform. Internet
Explorer 5.2, IE6, IE7 and Firefox do a pretty
good job, whereas Safari's support for
letter-spacing is less than perfect, and Opera's
is virtually non-existant. Still, the effect is
reasonable. Whilst you could probably do a better
looking job with a graphic image, this technique
has distinct advantages. Text can easily be
edited and is machine readable which means that
visually impaired users can still read it, and
search engines can index it. You can also
insert hypertext links. If you don't have
server-side scripting you can probably
adapt the technique to Javascript.
With a bit more maths, this
method can be used to fill
any arbitrary shape.
Have Fun!