My understanding is that most layout (positioning and dimension) problems with CSS are the result of a bad understanding of which is containing box of the box you are trying to lay out.However as far as I can tell, there is no means to know which is that containing box in browsers development tools like firebug, chrome or opera's inspection utilities.So does anyone know a reliable way to get that information ?And if possible in a visual way, e.g. like the box margin, border and padding boundaries highlighting present in all modern browser.
Getting the containing box of a given one in the CSS box-model
css;layout
.offsetParentLike all really useful stuff not part of any specs, but seems supported by all browsers. Only checked on FF3.5,3.6,5,6, IE8 and Chrome13 though.For visual aid you then just have to find the property in the DOM inspector of your browser and use its element highlighting feature the usual way.