plan for absolute positioning the element is removed completely from the normal flow and is positioned relative to it's containing block in Layout.layoutChildren() it should no use the absolute child when calculating where to start the next block after the abs child. the containing block is not the immediate parent block, but the closest parent block with position: absolute or the viewport (perhaps i should default the body to position: absolute?) for relative and static elements the containing block is the immediate parent block. for position: fixed the containing block is the viewport only. i will need to modify the context object to contain a reference to the viewport block and to most immediate containing block. they will need to be stored in terms of the current translate. create a method c.translate(int,int) to translate the graphics, plus the viewport reference and the containing block reference. intialize containing block to 0. change all g.translate into c.translate create translatetocontainingblock and translateFromContainingBlock create translatetofixed and translatefromfixed