Using jquery to get element's position relative to viewport

Question

What\'s the proper way to get the position of an element on the page relative to the viewport (rather than the document). jQuery.offset function seemed promising:

Answer 1

Here is a function that calculates the current position of an element within the viewport:

/**
 * Calculates the position of a given element within the viewport
 *
 * @param {string} obj jQuery object of the dom element to be monitored
 * @return {array} An array containing both X and Y positions as a number
 * ranging from 0 (under/right of viewport) to 1 (above/left of viewport)
 */
function visibility(obj) {
    var winw = jQuery(window).width(), winh = jQuery(window).height(),
        elw = obj.width(), elh = obj.height(),
        o = obj[0].getBoundingClientRect(),
        x1 = o.left - winw, x2 = o.left + elw,
        y1 = o.top - winh, y2 = o.top + elh;

    return [
        Math.max(0, Math.min((0 - x1) / (x2 - x1), 1)),
        Math.max(0, Math.min((0 - y1) / (y2 - y1), 1))
    ];
}

The return values are calculated like this:

Usage:

visibility($('#example'));  // returns [0.3742887830933581, 0.6103752759381899]

Demo:

function visibility(obj) {var winw = jQuery(window).width(),winh = jQuery(window).height(),elw = obj.width(),
    elh = obj.height(), o = obj[0].getBoundingClientRect(),x1 = o.left - winw, x2 = o.left + elw, y1 = o.top - winh, y2 = o.top + elh; return [Math.max(0, Math.min((0 - x1) / (x2 - x1), 1)),Math.max(0, Math.min((0 - y1) / (y2 - y1), 1))];
}
setInterval(function() {
  res = visibility($('#block'));
  $('#x').text(Math.round(res[0] * 100) + '%');
  $('#y').text(Math.round(res[1] * 100) + '%');
}, 100);

#block { width: 100px; height: 100px; border: 1px solid red; background: yellow; top: 50%; left: 50%; position: relative;
} #container { background: #EFF0F1; height: 950px; width: 1800px; margin-top: -40%; margin-left: -40%; overflow: scroll; position: relative;
} #res { position: fixed; top: 0; z-index: 2; font-family: Verdana; background: #c0c0c0; line-height: .1em; padding: 0 .5em; font-size: 12px;
}

  
X: 
  
Y: