I've found this snippet on Ajaxian, but I can't seem to use the cursor.y (or cursor.x) as a variable and when the function is called as such it does not seem to work. Is there a syntax problem or something else?

function getPosition(e) {
    e = e || window.event;
    var cursor = {x:0, y:0};
    if (e.pageX || e.pageY) {
      cursor.x = e.pageX;
      cursor.y = e.pageY;
    } 
    else {
      cursor.x = e.clientX + 
        (document.documentElement.scrollLeft || 
         document.body.scrollLeft) - 
         document.documentElement.clientLeft;
      cursor.y = e.clientY + 
        (document.documentElement.scrollTop ||
         document.body.scrollTop) - 
         document.documentElement.clientTop;
    }
    return cursor;
}

I'd preffer not to use jQuery UI if possible, since I've always thaught of jQuery and librarys as a bit of an overkill for most JS programing.