How do I get rid of an element's offset using CSS?

Question

I've got a positioning problem with some elements, upon inspecting it IE8 Developer tools it shows me this:

Where does offset come from?

Now I'm pretty sure my problem is that 12 offset, but how do I remove it? I can't find any mention of a CSS offset property. Do we need an Offset in addition to margin?

Here is the code thats producing this:

 <div id="wahoo" style="border: solid 1px black; height:100px;">

    <asp:TextBox ID="inputBox" runat="server" />

    <input id="btnDropDown" type="button" style="width:26px; height:26px; background-position: center center; border-left-color: buttonface; background-image: url(Images/WebResource.gif); border-bottom-color: buttonface; border-top-color: buttonface; background-repeat: no-repeat; border-right-color: buttonface;"  tabindex="99" />

    <div id="ListboxWrapper" style="display:none; position:absolute; onfocusout="this.style.display = 'none'"">
       <asp:ListBox ID="lstBoxCompany" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True" OnSelectedIndexChanged="lstBoxCompany_SelectedIndexChanged" style="z-index: 100;" Width="300px" />               
    </div>

</div>

The element with the offset is inputBox

Is your element positioned? Check `left` and `top` properties. — jessegavin, Jan 27 '11 at 14:44
A little code would be very useful here. There is no 'offset' rule in CSS, but IE does have a tendancy to add random pixels in random places. It's usually to do with floats and positioning — Alex, Jan 27 '11 at 14:49
I would assume 'offset' is 'pixels related to other elements' - such as a margin on a previous element pushing this one down. I don't have time to experiment with IE dev tools now to find out. — Quentin, Jan 27 '11 at 14:51
I've added the code complete with inline CSS so we can see whats going on — m.edmondson, Jan 27 '11 at 15:27
Is there a web-page example we can look at of this - for example so we can point firebug at it and understand the wider page. E.g. is your input control inheriting margin or padding from another css definition? — Kris C, Jan 27 '11 at 16:46
Ill try and get it uploaded somewhere soon - very busy atm :-S — m.edmondson, Jan 27 '11 at 16:50
@m.edmondson I had the same problem and the most voted question in this post saved my butt (thanks for your ver well explained post). You should review if you are ready to mark an accepted solution to your question. — daniloquio, Aug 23 '12 at 21:49

score 43 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 23 '12 at 15:12

43

That offset is basically the x,y position that the browser has calculated for the element based on it's position css attribute. So if you put a <br> before it or any other element, it would change the offset. For example, you could set it to 0 by:

#inputBox{position:absolute;top:0px;left:0px;}

or

#inputBox{position:relative;top:-12px;left:-2px;}

Therefore, whatever positioning issue you have, is not necessarily an issue with offset, though you could always fix it by playing with the top,left,right and bottom attributes.

Is your problem browser incompatibility?

edited Aug 23 '12 at 15:12

thomaux

19,133
10
76
103

answered Aug 20 '11 at 18:54

Neo

11,078
2
68
79

2

Please see Stony's comment about vertical-align as well. Fixing the alignment setting seems preferable to forcibly overriding the browser's positioning of the element. – Jeremy Condit Oct 02 '13 at 17:30

score 33 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 24 '19 at 10:42

33

For me, it was vertical-align: baseline vs vertical-align: top that was causing the top offset.

Try to set vertical-align: top

edited Jun 24 '19 at 10:42

Mirko Cianfarani

2,023
1
23
39

answered Sep 14 '12 at 09:58

Richard

4,740
4
32
39

2

This is better than using absolute positioning – user1 Feb 26 '13 at 13:38
2

Your answer is awesome, the fact that I have to set the vertical align when I have 4 inline-block divs that refuse to align is bull. You ended hours of work. Thank you. – Corey Ogburn Feb 14 '14 at 23:57
Worked with a ` – Amessihel Sep 04 '19 at 22:14

Alin Purcaru · Answer 3 · 2011-01-27T15:04:37.437

9

Quick fix:

position: relative;
top: -12px;
left: -2px;

this should balance out those offsets, but maybe you should take a look at your whole layout and see how that box interacts with other boxes.

As for terminology, left, right, top and bottom are CSS offset properties. They are used for positioning elements at a specific location (when used with absolute or fixed positioning), or to move them relative to their default location (when used with relative positioning). Margins on the other hand specify gaps between boxes and they sometimes collapse, so they can't be reliably used as offsets.

But note that in your case that offset may not be computed (solely) from CSS offsets.

edited Jan 27 '11 at 15:04

answered Jan 27 '11 at 14:54

Alin Purcaru

43,655
12
77
90

That just moves the whitespace to the other side of the element. – Quentin Jan 27 '11 at 14:55
@David What whitespace? And why anything other than the targeted box would be moved? – Alin Purcaru Jan 27 '11 at 14:58
Whitespace is space that has nothing in it. Things other than the targeted box would not be moved, that's the point. If you have something 1px below, and you move up 12px, then it is 13px below instead of 1px. – Quentin Jan 27 '11 at 15:01
2

@David We may not have the same definition of whitespace, but I get what you're trying to say. I agree that the gap will be moved to the other side. I labeled the solution a "quick fix" because it may or may not be usable. It's the only thing I can suggest until the asker provides more details. – Alin Purcaru Jan 27 '11 at 15:09

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 14 '12 at 21:11

Setting the top and left properties to negative values might not be a good workaround if your problem is simply that you're in quirks mode. This can happen if the page is missing a <!DOCTYPE> declaration, causing it to be rendered in quirks mode in IE8. In IE8 Developer Tools, make sure that "Quirks Mode" is not selected under "Document Mode". If it is selected, you may need to add the appropriate <!DOCTYPE> declaration.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 18 '13 at 17:45

2

If you're using the IE developer tools, make sure you haven't accidentally left them at an older setting. I was making myself crazy with this same issue until I saw that it was set to Internet Explorer 7 Standards. Changed it to Internet Explorer 9 Standards and everything snapped right into place.

answered Oct 18 '13 at 17:45

Tom McGee

76
7

1

Some of us have users still on IE7. – 15ee8f99-57ff-4f92-890c-b56153 Dec 30 '13 at 15:31

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 10 '14 at 10:51

2

moving element top: -12px or positioning it absolutely doesn't solve the problem but only masks it

I had the same problem - check if you have in one wrapping element mixed: floating elements with non-floating ones - my non-floating element caused this strange offset to the floating one

answered Nov 10 '14 at 10:51

Picard

3,745
3
41
50

In my case I was trying to match a website's look with that of a prototype. I had a row of inline-block divs with the same width as the prototype, but my offsets were off by 4. I discovered I had a mix of floating divs and non-floating on the website. Making them all floating removed the extra offset. This was especially perplexing because I couldn't see much else differing between the CSS. – Clint Brown Apr 18 '17 at 20:21

score 1 · Answer 7 · edited Jun 08 '16 at 04:46

1

I had the same issue on our .NET based website, running on DotNetNuke (DNN) and what solved it for me was basically a simple margin reset of the form tag. .NET based websites are often wrapped in a form and without resetting the margin you can see the strange offset appearing sometimes, mostly when there are some scripts included.

So if you are trying to fix this issue on your site, try enter this into your CSS file:

form {
  margin: 0;
}

edited Jun 08 '16 at 04:46

basher

2,381
1
23
34

answered Mar 27 '13 at 16:44

Vlastique

11
2

I had the same issue and changing the form margin also worked for me. – David Derman Jan 10 '14 at 16:46

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 20 '13 at 21:30

1

define margin and padding for the element is facing the problem:

#element_id {margin: 0; padding: 0}

and see if problem exists. IE renders the page with to more unwanted inheritance. you should stop it from doing so.

answered Jun 20 '13 at 21:30

Peyman Mohamadpour

17,954
24
89
100

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 30 '14 at 09:29

1

This seems weird, but you can try setting vertical-align: top in the CSS for the inputs. That fixes it in IE8, at least.

answered Jun 30 '14 at 09:29

BrainCoder

5,197
5
30
33

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Jun 08 '13 at 15:40

0

Just set the outline to none like this

[Identifier] { outline:none; }

answered Jun 08 '13 at 15:40

Daniel Barde

2,603
5
31
40

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 18 '19 at 10:30

0

In my case the offset was added to a custom element with grid layout within an li while the ul was a vertical flexbox.

The pretty simple solution was to set the define the li as block element with

li {
 display: block;
}

And the offset was gone

answered Jul 18 '19 at 10:30

Th3S4mur41

1,930
1
13
28

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Nov 08 '11 at 05:35

0

You can apply a reset css to get rid of those 'defaults'. Here is an example of a reset css http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/ . Just apply the reset styles BEFORE your own styles.

answered Nov 08 '11 at 05:35

sawe

1,141
14
24

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Mar 27 '12 at 07:13

0

I had the same problem. The offset appeared after UpdatePanel refresh. The solution was to add an empty tag before the UpdatePanel like this:

<div></div>

...

answered Mar 27 '12 at 07:13

mitkob

1

1

UpdatePanel is an ASP.NET thing, right? Because this doesn't seem to be an ASP.NET question. – Joe Mabel Apr 23 '12 at 16:25
In fact if you view the code snippet in the question you would notice that it is an ASP.NET question. – mitkob Apr 24 '12 at 09:27
Ah. Sorry, just skimmed, didn't notice the asp:TextBox. FWIW, the **issue** isn't an ASP.NET **issue**. When this problem shows up, typically what it means is that the offset in question is due to some other element being larger, and if it's resulting in bad layout, the key is normally to reduce margin, padding, or border on some other element within the same parent div. – Joe Mabel Apr 25 '12 at 16:09

How do I get rid of an element's offset using CSS?

13 Answers13

Linked