Retrieve the position (X,Y) of an HTML element

If page includes - at least- any "DIV", the function given by meouw throws the "Y" value beyond current page limits. In order to find the exact position, you need to handle both offsetParent's and parentNode's.

Try the code given below (it is checked for FF2):

var getAbsPosition = function(el){
    var el2 = el;
    var curtop = 0;
    var curleft = 0;
    if (document.getElementById || document.all) {
        do  {
            curleft += el.offsetLeft-el.scrollLeft;
            curtop += el.offsetTop-el.scrollTop;
            el = el.offsetParent;
            el2 = el2.parentNode;
            while (el2 != el) {
                curleft -= el2.scrollLeft;
                curtop -= el2.scrollTop;
                el2 = el2.parentNode;
            }
        } while (el.offsetParent);

    } else if (document.layers) {
        curtop += el.y;
        curleft += el.x;
    }
    return [curtop, curleft];
};

To retrieve the position relative to the page efficiently, and without using a recursive function: (includes IE also)

var element = document.getElementById('elementId'); //replace elementId with your element's Id.
var rect = element.getBoundingClientRect();
var elementLeft,elementTop; //x and y
var scrollTop = document.documentElement.scrollTop?
                document.documentElement.scrollTop:document.body.scrollTop;
var scrollLeft = document.documentElement.scrollLeft?                   
                 document.documentElement.scrollLeft:document.body.scrollLeft;
elementTop = rect.top+scrollTop;
elementLeft = rect.left+scrollLeft;

You might be better served by using a JavaScript framework, that has functions to return such information (and so much more!) in a browser-independant fashion. Here are a few:

• Prototype
• jQuery
• MooTools
• YUI (yahoo)

With these frameworks, you could do something like: $('id-of-img').top to get the y-pixel coordinate of the image.