I need to be able to retrieve / set an element's position within it's containing element.

Unfortunately, position() seems to return different positions depending on the scroll position of that parent element (it has overflow: auto).

This is important, since I'm trying to position other elements to be centered on this one (using .css('top')). But when the container is scrolled down, they don't line up correctly. And their css top values don't seem to reflect their real positions (they're absolutely positioned, and draggable).

Any suggestions?