Flash z-order — always on top?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:41:55 +0000

I had a JavaScript pull-down menu that overlapped with a Flash movie. No matter what z-index I set, the menu always rendered behind the Flash content. Classic problem.

The fix is to set wmode to transparent on both the <object> and <embed> tags:

<object ...>
  <param name="wmode" value="transparent">
  <embed ... wmode="transparent"></embed>
</object>

This tells the Flash player to respect the browser’s stacking context instead of rendering in its own window layer. The menu displays correctly over the Flash movie after that.

Flash on Shafiq Alibhai

Flash z-order — always on top?