I have a <li> which is nested inside a containing <ul>, what I would like is to calculate the offset. But have the top-left corner of the <ul> be 0, 0.

So my HTML is:

<div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 760px; height: 760px; overflow: hidden;">
    <ul style="width: 2000px; height: 2000px; min-height: 2000px; position: relative;">
        <li style="position: relative; width: 40px; height: 40px;"></li>
    </ul>
</div>

And my current jQuery is:

thePos = $('ul li').offset();
alert('X = '+thePos.left+', Y = 'thePos.top);

However, this is returning offsets that are not 0, 0. I guess it is calculating the offset relative to the edge of the document instead of the parent container.

How can I get around this?

Thanking you.

note: position() doesn't retrieve the right numbers either :(

I have a <li> which is nested inside a containing <ul>, what I would like is to calculate the offset. But have the top-left corner of the <ul> be 0, 0.

So my HTML is:

<div style="margin: 0 auto; width: 760px; height: 760px; overflow: hidden;">
    <ul style="width: 2000px; height: 2000px; min-height: 2000px; position: relative;">
        <li style="position: relative; width: 40px; height: 40px;"></li>
    </ul>
</div>

And my current jQuery is:

thePos = $('ul li').offset();
alert('X = '+thePos.left+', Y = 'thePos.top);

However, this is returning offsets that are not 0, 0. I guess it is calculating the offset relative to the edge of the document instead of the parent container.

How can I get around this?

Thanking you.

note: position() doesn't retrieve the right numbers either :(

• javascript
• jquery
• html
• css

2 Answers 2

Try using position() instead of offset().

From the jQuery docs:

The .offset() method allows us to retrieve the current position of an element relative to the document. Contrast this with .position(), which retrieves the current position relative to the offset parent.

I fixed this by setting:

thePosX = $('ul li').css('left');
thePosY = $('ul li').css('top');

Instead of:

thePos = $('ul li').css('left');