Transparent hollow or cut out shape in HTML

You can achieve a transparent cut out circle with 2 different techniques :

1.SVG

The following examples use an inline svg. The first snippet uses the mask element to cut out the transparent circle and the second hollow circle is made with a path element. The circle is made with 2 arc commands :

With the mask element :

body{background:url('https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8760/17195790401_ceeeafcddb_o.jpg');background-size:cover;}

<svg viewbox="0 0 100 50" width="100%">
  <defs>
    <mask id="mask" x="0" y="0" width="80" height="30">
      <rect x="5" y="5" width="90" height="40" fill="#fff"/>
      <circle cx="50" cy="25" r="15" />
    </mask>
  </defs>
  <rect x="0" y="0" width="100" height="50" mask="url(#mask)" fill-opacity="0.7"/>    
</svg>

With one path element :

body{background: url('https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8760/17195790401_ceeeafcddb_o.jpg');background-size:cover;}
svg{
  display:block;
  width:70%;
  height:auto;
  margin:0 auto;
}
path{
  transition:fill .5s;
  fill:#E3DFD2;
}
path:hover{
  fill:pink;
}

<svg viewbox="-10 -1 30 12">
  <path d="M-10 -1 H30 V12 H-10z M 5 5 m -5, 0 a 5,5 0 1,0 10,0 a 5,5 0 1,0 -10,0z"/>
</svg>

The main advantages of using SVG in this case are :

• Shorter code
• You can easily use an image or gradient to fill the circle mask
• maintain the boundaries of the shape and trigger mouse envents only over the fill respecting the mask (hover the transparent cut out circle in the example)

2. CSS only using BOX-SHADOWS

Create a div with overflow:hidden; and a round pseudo element inside it with border-radius. Give it a huge box-shadow and no background :

div{
    position:relative;
    width:500px; height:200px;
    margin:0 auto;
    overflow:hidden;
}
div:after{
    content:'';
    position:absolute;
    left:175px; top:25px;
    border-radius:100%;
    width:150px; height:150px;
    box-shadow: 0px 0px 0px 2000px #E3DFD2;
}

body{background: url('https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8760/17195790401_ceeeafcddb_o.jpg');background-size:cover;}

<div></div>

Browser support for box-shadows is IE9+ see canIuse

The same approach would be to use border instead of box-shadows. It is interesting if you need to support browsers that don’t support box-shadows like IE8. The technique is the same but you need to compensate with the top and left values to keep the circle in the center of the div :

body{
    background: url('https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8760/17195790401_ceeeafcddb_o.jpg');
    background-size:cover;
}
div{
    position:relative;
    width:500px; height:200px;
    margin:0 auto;
    overflow:hidden;
}
div:after{
    content:'';
    position:absolute;
    left:-325px; top:-475px;
    border-radius:100%;
    width:150px; height:150px;
    border:500px solid #E3DFD2;
}

<div></div>