Question

I get different values from Prototype’s cumulativeOffset function in Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 within a complex layout with several elements having paddings and margins.

This seems to be a known bug: Discussion

Does anybody know a prototype based or prototype compatible method of reliably determining the offset height of a statically positioned element?

Answer 1

Here’s a diagram from Kangax’s cheat sheet, who is one of the members of the Prototype DEV team.

alt text http://preview.moveable.com/JM/dev/prototype_cheatsheet_1.6.0.png

You could add the viewport offset and the scroll offsets, but I’m not sure of this will contain the same issue.

Most of the time I use this Quirksmode script for finding element positions:

function findPos(obj) {
    //find coordinates of a DIV
    var curleft = curtop = 0;
    if (obj.offsetParent) {
        curleft = obj.offsetLeft
        curtop = obj.offsetTop
        while (obj = obj.offsetParent) {
            curleft += obj.offsetLeft
            curtop += obj.offsetTop
        }
    }
    return [curleft, curtop];
}