273585 - DHTML menus draw behind flash banner(s) and are obscured

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 137189

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Christopher Curzio]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

When attempting to navigate certain sites that have DHTML menus where the
menubar is above a Flash movie, the Flash movie is drawn on the topmost layer of
the page and obscures any DHTML behind it.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to http://www.ecsusa.com/
2. Hover over the menubar options (Products,Downloads,Support/Service,News, etc.)
3. Note that the menus that pop up are obscured by the flash banner. (AdBlock it
to see the menu itself)

Actual Results:  
The menu(s) were obscured by the flash banner. 

Expected Results:  
Draw the menus above the flash movie.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

WFM with WinXP: can you reproduce with a clean profile, with no extensions?
Adblock may well be messing things up even when it isn't blocking.

Comment 2

[Christopher Curzio]

Tested with a fresh, empty profile. Same behavior with or without adblock enabled. 

Comment 3

[Rob North]

Isn't this a dupe of bug 189608?

Comment 4

[Jefferson]

Attachment: Illustration of Flash-in-front-of-menus effect

Yeah, it's not clear that there's any way for an end-user to work around this
behavior. In IE, the identical thing happens. This may be because the Flash
movie is invoked by an <OBJECT> tag, which the browser treats as a separate
window above everything in the window below it (at least the things created
before the <OBJECT> tag). On the other hand, MS writes that ActiveX controls
are windowless...see http://support.microsoft.com/?id=177378 for further
confusion. Whatever the precise reason, it appears that, consistent with the
earlier bug mentioned, it is an issue for the web page's author, and users
should complain to the webmaster if a site's menus are dysfunctional.

Comment 5

[Jefferson]

Attachment: Same site when ad loaded is an ordinary GIF file

Comment 6

[Stéphane Marguerin]

I am seing the same kind of problem on the home page of Asustek at
http://www.asus.com/index.htm. IE displays it correctly. With Firefox, I cannot
use most part of the menus because they are behind the flash object.

Comment 7

[Scott Whittaker]

This is not a Firefox bug. The problem is in the z-order of stacking HTML
elements. The stacking order on a web page is determined by the sequence they
appear in the HTML. You can however use CSS to set z-order values for page
elements. Higher z-order elements appear on top of lower z-order elements.
Simply wrap your .swf code in a DIV and set the DIV's z-order with CSS.

If you have a complex page with several overlapping Flash elements that need to
change their stacking order when they are interacted with, you may need to use
an actionscript fscommand to trigger some javascript which changes the Flash
movie to bring it to the top, and another one to put it back where it was.

Comment 8

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

*** Bug 295697 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Tomasz Ostrowski]

In reply to comment #7 from Scott Whittaker:

> The problem is in the z-order of stacking HTML
> elements.

If this was true then this bug will be also seen on Windows platform and it is
not. It doesn't work no matter how high z-index is set.

------------------------------

In reply to comment #1 from Phil Ringnalda:

> WFM with WinXP

It is Linux platform bug.

------------------------------

In reply to comment #4 From Jefferson:

> Yeah, it's not clear that there's any way for an end-user to work around this
> behavior. In IE, the identical thing happens.

It does not if you set <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> within <object>
tag, as documented in
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_15523
So it could be Linux Flash plugin bug not Gecko.

Comment 10

[José Jeria]

The url has no flash. Did they remove it?

Comment 11

[Manuel Schutze]

Attachment: Problem doesn't hapen on IE6

Comment 12

[Manuel Schutze]

Attachment: Problem does hapen on Firefox 1.6

Comment 13

[Manuel Schutze]

I've just made a page with a DHTML menu and a flash banner
(http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base.htm). The same problem described
above is hapening to me. The banner is displaying in front of the menu. I read
that page about turning the flash movie transparent, but it doesn't help. It
would just turn the background transparent, not the whole movie.
As I showed on the images, the bug doesn't hapen on IE6. So, if they resolved
the problem, there must be a way to do the same in Firefox, right?

Comment 14

[José Jeria]

(In reply to comment #13)
> I've just made a page with a DHTML menu and a flash banner
> (http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base.htm). 

That is not what this bug is about, and the problem y ou have is that you dont
have wmode="transparent" attribute on the embed

Comment 15

[Manuel Schutze]

(In reply to comment #14)
> (In reply to comment #13)
> > I've just made a page with a DHTML menu and a flash banner
> > (http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base.htm). 
> 
> That is not what this bug is about, and the problem y ou have is that you dont
> have wmode="transparent" attribute on the embed

I've set the wmode to transparent, but the banner disapears (see it by yourself
at http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base-wmode.htm). What I think this
function is for is to allow flash movies to have a transparent background. But
my banner hasn't this kind of thing. And if my complaint doesn't fit in this
bug, would it be wise to start a new Bug?

Comment 16

[Masatoshi Kimura [:emk]]

(In reply to comment #15)
> I've set the wmode to transparent, but the banner disapears (see it by yourself
> at http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base-wmode.htm). 
Try wmode="opaque".
WFM by saving _base-wmode.htm and changing "transparent" to "opaque".

Comment 17

[Manuel Schutze]

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > I've set the wmode to transparent, but the banner disapears (see it by yourself
> > at http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base-wmode.htm). 
> Try wmode="opaque".
> WFM by saving _base-wmode.htm and changing "transparent" to "opaque".

Hey, wonderfull! It works fine on Firefox now (http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base-wmode2.htm). It also works fine on IE. Thankyou very much!

Comment 18

[Manuel Schutze]

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > I've set the wmode to transparent, but the banner disapears (see it by yourself
> > at http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base-wmode.htm). 
> Try wmode="opaque".
> WFM by saving _base-wmode.htm and changing "transparent" to "opaque".

Hey, wonderfull! It works fine on Firefox now (http://patologia.ocorpohumano.com.br/_base-wmode2.htm). It also works fine on IE. Thankyou very much!

Comment 19

[idieforspoilers]

http://www.hotlink.com.my/level2/hotlevel2.asp?AID=442

I'm having the same problem described with this website but I'm on windows.

Comment 20

[cjbackhouse]

http://www.thorpepark.co.uk/
and
http://www.chessington.co.uk/
mouseover the menus at the top, theya appear behind the flash.
Linux, firefox 1.5.0.3

Comment 21

[José Jeria]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 137189 ***