How to get an element's top position relative to the browser's viewport?

Question

I want to get the position of an element relative to the browser\'s viewport (the viewport in which the page is displayed, not the whole page). How can this be done in JavaS

Answer 1

The function on this page will return a rectangle with the top, left, height and width co ordinates of a passed element relative to the browser view port.

    localToGlobal: function( _el ) {
       var target = _el,
       target_width = target.offsetWidth,
       target_height = target.offsetHeight,
       target_left = target.offsetLeft,
       target_top = target.offsetTop,
       gleft = 0,
       gtop = 0,
       rect = {};

       var moonwalk = function( _parent ) {
        if (!!_parent) {
            gleft += _parent.offsetLeft;
            gtop += _parent.offsetTop;
            moonwalk( _parent.offsetParent );
        } else {
            return rect = {
            top: target.offsetTop + gtop,
            left: target.offsetLeft + gleft,
            bottom: (target.offsetTop + gtop) + target_height,
            right: (target.offsetLeft + gleft) + target_width
            };
        }
    };
        moonwalk( target.offsetParent );
        return rect;
}