Absolute position of an element on the screen using jQuery

See .offset() here in the jQuery doc. It gives the position relative to the document, not to the parent. You perhaps have .offset() and .position() confused. If you want the position in the window instead of the position in the document, you can subtract off the .scrollTop() and .scrollLeft() values to account for the scrolled position.

Here's an excerpt from the doc:

The .offset() method allows us to retrieve the current position of an element relative to the document. Contrast this with .position(), which retrieves the current position relative to the offset parent. When positioning a new element on top of an existing one for global manipulation (in particular, for implementing drag-and-drop), .offset() is the more useful.

To combine these:

var offset = $("selector").offset();
var posY = offset.top - $(window).scrollTop();
var posX = offset.left - $(window).scrollLeft(); 

You can try it here (scroll to see the numbers change): http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/hxRPQ/

BTW, if anyone want to get coordinates of element on screen without jQuery, please try this:

function getOffsetTop (el) {
    if (el.offsetParent) return el.offsetTop + getOffsetTop(el.offsetParent)
    return el.offsetTop || 0
}
function getOffsetLeft (el) {
    if (el.offsetParent) return el.offsetLeft + getOffsetLeft(el.offsetParent)
    return el.offsetleft || 0
}
function coordinates(el) {
    var y1 = getOffsetTop(el) - window.scrollY;
    var x1 = getOffsetLeft(el) - window.scrollX; 
    var y2 = y1 + el.offsetHeight;
    var x2 = x1 + el.offsetWidth;
    return {
        x1: x1, x2: x2, y1: y1, y2: y2
    }
}

For the absolute coordinates of any jquery element I wrote this function, it probably doesnt work for all css position types but maybe its a good start for someone ..

function AbsoluteCoordinates($element) {
    var sTop = $(window).scrollTop();
    var sLeft = $(window).scrollLeft();
    var w = $element.width();
    var h = $element.height();
    var offset = $element.offset(); 
    var $p = $element;
    while(typeof $p == 'object') {
        var pOffset = $p.parent().offset();
        if(typeof pOffset == 'undefined') break;
        offset.left = offset.left + (pOffset.left);
        offset.top = offset.top + (pOffset.top);
        $p = $p.parent();
    }

    var pos = {
          left: offset.left + sLeft,
          right: offset.left + w + sLeft,
          top:  offset.top + sTop,
          bottom: offset.top + h + sTop,
    }
    pos.tl = { x: pos.left, y: pos.top };
    pos.tr = { x: pos.right, y: pos.top };
    pos.bl = { x: pos.left, y: pos.bottom };
    pos.br = { x: pos.right, y: pos.bottom };
    //console.log( 'left: ' + pos.left + ' - right: ' + pos.right +' - top: ' + pos.top +' - bottom: ' + pos.bottom  );
    return pos;
}