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I spent a while researching which SE site to post this on, but none seemed more appropriate than SO.

I'm trying to document something regarding coordinate systems in HTML, and am keen not to invent a new term if one already exists.

With regards to absolute positioning:

By default, the container is the browser window, but if a parent element either has position: relative or position: absolute set on it, then it will act as the parent for positioning coordinates for its children.

Does this "positioning parent" have a snappier, official(ish) name?

Community
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spender
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1 Answers1

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The term you're probably looking for is "containing block". It is described in section 10.1 of CSS2 and section 3.1 of css-position. Note however that the area of a containing block may not necessarily be the same as the area of the padding box of the element that serves as the containing block. The aforementioned specifications have all the details.

BoltClock
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  • That looks like the one. Interestingly, the documentation I'm writing seems to be specifically related to a browser bug we're seeing that appears to contravene 10.1.4.1 in CSS2/3.1.2.2 in CSS3 . Armed with this, I'll make a test case and open a new question. Thanks. – spender Aug 03 '16 at 17:04
  • @spender: I'm not well-versed with inline layout, but I'd be interested in taking a look. – BoltClock Aug 03 '16 at 17:08
  • I'll drop a link here when it's formulated. – spender Aug 03 '16 at 17:08
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38750180/absolute-positioning-within-inline-elements-is-this-behaviour-correct – spender Aug 03 '16 at 17:30