Browser developer tools: what is the Position of the HTML element?

user2864740 picture user2864740 · Nov 8, 2014 · Viewed 30.9k times · Source

Modern Web Developer tools (in Chrome / FF / IE, eg.) provide a way to see the "Box Model" and "Computed CSS Properties" of a particular element. However;

Is there a way to monitor the final computed/layout position easily with such tools?


Preferably absolute, but within the parent container is also suitable. I am amendable to using any of the previously mentioned [Windows] browsers, but prefer to use Chrome.

Answer

Wayne Maurer picture Wayne Maurer · Aug 4, 2016

In Chrome, Firefox, Edge and IE11+, when an element is selected, you can access this element in the console window by typing:

$0

You can then query and manipulate using the Javascript DOM API, which has a very useful method called Element.getBoundingClientRect().

So all you have to do is type the following into the console window when an element is selected:

$0.getBoundingClientRect()

and the browser will return an object such as:

{ x: 1081, y: 72, width: 49, height: 28, top: 72, right: 1130, bottom: 99, left: 1081 }