CSS: How to have position:absolute div inside a position:relative div not be cropped by an overflow:hidden on a container

A trick that works is to position box #2 with position: absolute instead of position: relative. We usually put a position: relative on an outer box (here box #2) when we want an inner box (here box #3) with position: absolute to be positioned relative to the outer box. But remember: for box #3 to be positioned relative to box #2, box #2 just need to be positioned. With this change, we get:

And here is the full code with this change:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
    <head>
        <style type="text/css">

            /* Positioning */
            #box1 { overflow: hidden }
            #box2 { position: absolute }
            #box3 { position: absolute; top: 10px }

            /* Styling */
            #box1 { background: #efe; padding: 5px; width: 125px }
            #box2 { background: #fee; padding: 2px; width: 100px; height: 100px }
            #box3 { background: #eef; padding: 2px; width: 75px; height: 150px }

        </style>
    </head>
    <body>
        <br/><br/><br/>
        <div id="box1">
            <div id="box2">
                <div id="box3"/>
            </div>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

There's no magical solution of displaying something outside an overflow hidden container.

A similar effect can be achieved by having an absolute positioned div that matches the size of its parent by positioning it inside your current relative container (the div you don't wish to clip should be outside this div):

#1 .mask {
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 1;
  overflow: hidden;
}

Take in mind that if you only have to clip content on the x axis (which appears to be your case, as you only have set the div's width), you can use overflow-x: hidden.

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