Here's some text before the containing box.
The books say that HTML elements styled with position: absolute are supposed to be positioned relative to their container.
Here I have a div containing some text and two flower images. The images are positioned with absolute, coordinates (150, 10) and (450, 10). As you see by their vertical position, they are positioned relative to the page, not the containing div.
Another problem: the div specifies style overflow: hidden; yet the absolutely positioned flowers are not clipped to the boundaries of the containing div.
(This version specifies an HTML 4.1 transitional doctype, i.e. 'quirks' mode.)
Versions: no doctype | transitional | strict | xhtml