jQuery get mouse position within an element

Question

I was hoping to craft a control where a user could click inside a div, then drag the mouse, then let up on the mouse in order to indicate how long they want something to be.

Answer 1

One way is to use the jQuery offset method to translate the event.pageX and event.pageY coordinates from the event into a mouse position relative to the parent. Here's an example for future reference:

$("#something").click(function(e){
   var parentOffset = $(this).parent().offset(); 
   //or $(this).offset(); if you really just want the current element's offset
   var relX = e.pageX - parentOffset.left;
   var relY = e.pageY - parentOffset.top;
});