I know it's possible to draw circles with border-radius:50%
, but it really is a bit of a hack. And it doesn't work in IE8 or lower, without using even more hacks, like CSS3Pie.
So while I accept that you've produced a good-looking Venn diagram in your fiddle example, I don't think it's the best way to do this.
A much better solution would be to use a proper graphics library to draw the diagram using either Canvas or SVG.
For Canvas, you could try this library: http://www.canvasxpress.org/venn.html
For SVG, I would recommend Raphael, which will produce hover-able Venn diagrams in about four lines of code.
I know that neither Canvas nor SVG are supported by IE8, but then neither is border-radius
, so I assume that isn't a criteria for you.
In any case, Raphael does actually work in all versions of IE, as it detects the browser and renders VML instead of SVG if it's running in IE. Canvas support can also be hacked into older IEs if you really need it.