Are OBJECT & EMBED tags always on top?

Question

I have a site I made that I am streaming video on, its starting to look pretty cool but the menu I made in CSS is always under the video so some of the links dissappear behind the object.

Does anyone know if I can fix this, I think I tried z-index one time to no avail?

I just reposted this question since this is also my problem.

Bogeyman

Added the flash tag because OP stated in comments that his video is a Flash object. – Lurid

Answer 1

Set wmode="transparent" (transparent background) or wmode="opaque" (opaque background affected by bgcolor).

The default value is window which means that the object will have its own "window", so it is not affected by anything else in the webpage at all. If you set it to transparent or opaque, it will become "a part of the page".

Like:

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

This only applies to Flash AFAIK.

Lurid

Doesn't this apply only to Flash movies? – Shouse

@Shouse Thanks, added. I assumed this is a Flash movie. – Lurid

@bažmegakapa: is there any work aroud for other objects such as 3dxml player object? – Tonsil

@john Never tried that. Check the docs and if you cannot find any information, writing them an email could be a good idea. – Lurid

for anyone wondering how this works in 2015, the <embed wmode="transparent" ...> section is all you need (at least in firefox) and no need to worry about setting wmode in url's param's or iframes – Indican

Answer 2

What object is rendered with your object/embed tags? Is it Flash? If so, you can set the parameter wmode to transparent or opaque to regain x-order control.

See this tech note from Adobe for more info.

If you're not rendering Flash, you'll need to look into the available parameters from the supplier of the plugin (i.e. Apple for Quicktime etc) to see whether anything similar is on offer.

Footboy

When you right click, do you get a Flash menu? I think utube still use Flash, but I'm not 100%. – Footboy

Yes. It does have a flash menu. – Bogeyman

Answer 3

They are not "always on top" by definition, but some plugins don't quite support Z ordering, and some need to be given extra parameters to enable elements on top of the video. Flash, for instance, requires a wmode parameter to obey Z ordering.

What plugin are you using?

Fitzgerald