macromedia flash sitedesign: I have a colleague who has a site where there are HTML generated dropdown
menus. There is also a flash movie element. When the menus are moused-over
they drop down, and need to fall across the area occupied by the flash movie,
at least partly (in the same way Macintosh menus fall over the current app's
activities on the screen).

I should think layers is the way to go here (I don't have the original code in
front of me, but I believe this is how they are doing the menus). What is the
best way to make this work? Does flash respect layers coming in front of it?

Thanks!

Either do the menus as part of the flash, or use opaque wmode (do NOT use
transparent)
--
Jeckyl

NO!!!

Transparent wmode is incredibly buggy and does all sorts of weird things to
corrupt our movie .. don't use it.

try opaque mode, which is much less buggy and still allows you to put other
elements on top of your flash
--
Jeckyl

[quoted text, click to view]

Setting the Z index does nothing when dealing with layers and Flash. All you
need to do is set the properties of the Flash element to transparent. This
will allow DHTML layers to fall in front of the flash.

**Add this where it states the parameters: <param name="transparent">
**Add this to the Embed Src tag: wmode="transparent"



[quoted text, click to view]

Originally posted by: Newsgroup User
Setting the Z index does nothing when dealing with layers and Flash. All you
need to do is set the properties of the Flash element to transparent. This
will allow DHTML layers to fall in front of the flash.

**Add this where it states the parameters: <param name="transparent">
**Add this to the Embed Src tag: wmode="transparent"

OK, this works fine on my PC and Firefox, but on my Mac OSX and Firefox it
does not. yes, the dhtml menu overlays the flash, but when I try to hilight a
menu option that is over the top of the flash, the menu dissapears.

See for yourself at http://www.animalmakers.com/Catalog/index-test.php

Originally posted by: Newsgroup User
NO!!!

Transparent wmode is incredibly buggy and does all sorts of weird things to
corrupt our movie .. don't use it.

try opaque mode, which is much less buggy and still allows you to put other
elements on top of your flash
--
Jeckyl

What is the exact html top put in the embed and param statements to make
"opaque" work?

Animal Makers,

[quoted text, click to view]

Same as for WMODE transparent. Just change the word "transparent" to
opaque.

Check out these examples, and use your brower's View Source feature to
see the relevant HTML code.

http://www.communitymx.com/content/source/E5141/wmodenone.htm


David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net
Dev essays: http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."

Animal Makers,

[quoted text, click to view]

Neither does it for me. Those links are intended to lead you to
different pages that show various implementations of WMODE.

[quoted text, click to view]

What stuff?

[quoted text, click to view]

The reason you see the start in transparent mode is because the SWF
overtop of it is ... transparent. ;)

[quoted text, click to view]

I see a bouncing ball inside the white box. What browser are you using?
What OS are you using?

[quoted text, click to view]

WMODE is the key here, not opaque or transparent. WMODE is a special
mode that allows plug-in content to act as if it belongs in the z-index of a
web document (otherwise, Flash content -- and QuickTime content, and Java
content, etc., etc. [this isn't just a Flash thing] -- always appear on top
of everything else).

WMODE has more than one option. You can do WMODE with a transparent
background or with an opaque background. That said, it is well known (and
well documented) that WMODE isn't 100% successful on all platforms. So,
like with anything else, you have to know your audience and use any tool
(DHTML, CSS, WMODE, JavaScript) when you feel it best matches what your
audience can support.


David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net
Dev essays: http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."

Animal Makers,

[quoted text, click to view]

What you said was, "With or without the wmode command, it looks like a
white box," but maybe I misunderstood. Anwway, if you can see the bouncing
ball, you should at least be able to duplicate this WMODE usage in your own
SWFs in the same browsers.

[quoted text, click to view]

Sure, I agree. I wish IE supported CSS better than it does.

[quoted text, click to view]

Ridiculous or not, it's the way things work in this industry.

[quoted text, click to view]

Who's "they"? Flash 2.0 would only work for people who have the Flash 2
Player or higher, of course. ;) Heck, man, all of this business is tough.
What if your users have JavaScript disabled? What if your users are blind
or hard of hearing? What if ... you know, what if?

We can only roll with what we can.


David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net
Dev essays: http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."

OK, bringing my curser over the links does nothing at all in IE or FF. However,
if I click on the link, it does stuff.

I see the star appear only in transparent mode. With or without the wmode
command, it looks like a white box. The opaque option just shows me a white box
as well. I am not sure what "opaque" is supposed to do.

Originally posted by: karltraum
[quoted text, click to view]
What OS are you using?

I see the bouncing ball as well. I believe I said this. I checked the page out
in FF, IE and Safari

Originally posted by: karltraum

[quoted text, click to view]

Just kinda wish that there was a solution that worked for all the polular
browsers (ie, firefox, mozilla, safari, etc). It is ridiculous to have to fight
this for each and every browser. It is like they want us to revery back to
flash 2.0 so it would work with everybody.