How to Correctly Get Click Coordinates Relative to a Target Element in jQuery?

Identifying Click Coordinates on Target Element in jQuery

To determine the position of the mouse pointer on a specified HTML element upon clicking, we can leverage the jQuery event handler. However, a recent issue has been encountered where incorrect results are being returned.

Correcting Incorrect Positioning Results

The initial code provided attempted to calculate the click coordinates relative to the target element using the event.pageX and event.target.offsetLeft properties. However, it has been discovered that this method does not provide accurate results.

Understanding Event Coordinates

It is important to distinguish between two types of mouse pointer coordinates:

• Relative to the document: Obtained using event.pageX and event.pageY, which provide the pointer's position relative to the entire document.
• Relative to the element: Requires using the offset() method to determine the element's position within the document, followed by subtracting the offset values from the pointer coordinates.

Position() vs Offset()

In this context, the position() method is not appropriate as it calculates the element's position relative to its parent container, which is not relevant in this scenario. The offset() method, on the other hand, provides the element's position relative to the document, enabling us to calculate the click coordinates accurately.

Improved Code

To resolve the issue, the code has been revised to correctly determine the click coordinates relative to the target element:

jQuery("#seek-bar").click(function(e){
    var offset = $(this).offset();
    var x = e.pageX - offset.left;
    var y = e.pageY - offset.top;
    alert(x + ", " + y); 
});

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