How to position an HTML element on top of another element without affecting the layout of the element(s) beneath?

Question

Generally speaking, HTML layout is flow-based. Each element gets positioned after the one before it, either to the right of it or beneath it. There are plenty of exception

Answer 1

If you use

table {position:relative;}

then you can use:

table img {
    position:absolute;
    top: #px;
    left: #px;
}

This will offset the image to a particular location within the containing table and take it out of the flow of the rest of the table around it.