offsetParent

Property of dom/HTMLElement dom/HTMLElement

Syntax

var result = element.offsetParent;
element.offsetParent = value;

Examples

This example shows how to determine the position of a td object. Although the td object appears to the far right in the document, its position is close to the x-axis and y-axis, because its offset parent is a table object rather than the document body.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
  <TITLE>Elements: Positions</TITLE>
  <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JScript">

  function showPosition()
  {
    var oElement = document.all.oCell;

    alert("The TD element is at (" + oElement.offsetLeft +
          "," + oElement.offsetTop + ")\n" + "The offset parent is "
          + oElement.offsetParent.tagName );
  }
  </SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
<BODY onload="showPosition()">
<P>This document contains a right-aligned table.
<TABLE BORDER=1 ALIGN=right>
  <TR>
    <TD ID=oCell>This is a small table.</TD>
  </TR>
</TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>

[Note For Internet Explorer 4.0, this same example returns a position of 0,0 because the offset parent is the table row. View live example]

Notes

Remarks

Most of the time the offsetParent property returns the body object. Note In Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, the offsetParent property returns the table object for the td object; in Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 it returns the tr object. You can use the parentElement property to retrieve the immediate container of the table cell.

Syntax

Attributions

Microsoft Developer Network: [Windows Internet Explorer API reference Article]