Element.clientTop

The width of the top border of an element in pixels. It is a read-only, integer property of element.

As it happens, all that lies between the two locations (offsetTop and client area top) is the element's border. This is because the offsetTop indicates the location of the top of the border (not the margin) while the client area starts immediately below the border, (client area includes padding.) Therefore, the clientTop value will always equal the integer portion of the .getComputedStyle() value for "border-top-width". (Actually might be Math.round(parseFloat()).) For example, if the computed "border-top-width" is zero, then clientTop is also zero.

Syntax

var top = element.clientTop;

Example

In the following example, the client area has a white background and a 24px black border-top. The clientTop value is the distance from where the margin (yellow) area ends and the padding and content areas (white) begin: that is, 24px.

HTML

<div id="container">
  <div id="contained">
    <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor
	  incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis
	  nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.</p>
  </div>
</div>

CSS

#container {
	margin: 3rem;
	background-color: rgb(255, 255, 204);
	border: 4px dashed black;
}

#contained {
	margin: 1rem;
	border-top: 24px black solid;
	padding: 0px 28px;
	overflow: auto;
	background-color: white;
}

Result

Notes

clientTop was first introduced in the MS IE DHTML object model.

Specifications

Browser compatibility