This is actually pretty easy to do with rgba() in CSS, but it's something pretty small that people don't know about.
Most people are aware of using rgb(255,255,255) instead of #FFFFFF to set colors
You can simply set the opacity of the background (which is the opposite of transparency, where 1 is solid and 0 is completely transparent).
.bg { background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.5) //This sets background to black, with half transparency color: #FFFFFF; }
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