Question

I’m trying to manipulate a div element. Although I have defined certain property values, I can’t seem to get the initial values.

Here’s the problem: Fiddle

I’m at the end of my rope… Thanks.

Answer 1

I think you have to use document.styleSheets, find your stylesheet, then loop through the cssRules(IE rules) list to match a selector to "#viewbase" and then you can access your style properties like you would have with inline styles, since the style info in there is also a CSSStyleDeclaration ( so you can use element.style.left and so on).

Sidenode: getComputedStyle doesn’t work on most versions of IE. IE has currentStyle properties for each element, but it’s not the same thing. Maybe a combination of both will also work.

UPDATE

Managed to get the initial positions, if that’s what you need, you can reassign these values if i remember well.

function trigger(e) {

item = this;

if (!e) var e = window.event;
if (e.pageX || e.pageY) {
    x1 = e.pageX;
    y1 = e.pageY;
}
else if (e.clientX || e.clientY) {
    x1 = e.clientX;
    y1 = e.clientY;
}

document.getElementById("ex").innerHTML = x1;
document.getElementById("wye").innerHTML= y1;
// the stylesheet you defined, in a standalone context, it might 
// have another index, (i.e. 0 if it's the only one)
list = document.styleSheets[2].cssRules;

for(var i=0;i<list.length;i++)
    //match #viewbase
    if(list[i].selectorText.toLowerCase() == "#"+item.id)
    { item = list[i];
      break;
     }

document.getElementById("xval").innerHTML = item.style.left;
document.getElementById("yval").innerHTML = item.style.top;

document.getElementById("parseX").innerHTML = parseInt(item.style.left, 10);
document.getElementById("parseY").innerHTML = parseInt(item.style.top, 10);

document.getElementById("debug").innerHTML = 'clicked!';

document.onmouseup = release;
}

The other version would be to use the following

var styleDef = window.getComputedStyle(item) || item.currentStyle;  
document.getElementById("xval").innerHTML = styleDef.left;
document.getElementById("yval").innerHTML = styleDef.top;