title: geting the absolute position of an element in jquery
body: <p>I have a series of elements setup like the example below:</p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;div id="floater"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;div id="alert"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</code>
  <code>&lt;div id="news"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</code>
  <code>&lt;div id="links"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>When a link in the <code>links div</code> is clicked I used jQuery to animate the <code>floater</code> div to its position so as the user can easily reference the last link they clicked.</p>
  
  <p>However. <code>alert</code> is setup to fade out and vanish <code>onClick</code> and <code>news</code> is setup with a toggle so that it accordions in and out of view.</p>
  
  <p>Depending on the state of <code>alert</code> and <code>news</code> the <code>floater</code> will animate to an incorrect position.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to get the actual true current position of an element in jQuery other than <code>offset()</code> or <code>position()</code>?</p>