This guest post was written by V Scott Ellis of Blackbox Technologies, a business that helps companies to maximize their web presence. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.
One of the more common issues with embedding a flash object on your home page (or any page for that matter) is that if it is near the navigation and you have CSS drop-down menus, then you may find your drop-down menu getting lost behind the flash object. If you haven’t dealt with this before it can feel like a nightmare, but fortunately it’s a pretty easy fix.
The Problem: You have a CSS based drop-down menu in your navigation and a flash element near it the menus may get “hidden” behind the flash object.
The Solution: Set the z-index of the div holding the flash to 1 and the z-index of the div holding the nav to 2.
In the flash element:
Look for the flash <object> tag and add the following code:
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">
You’ll want to insert this code right below the <param name=”quality” value=”high”> tag and include the code wmode=”transparent” in the flash <embed> tag .
V Scott Ellis
Scott Ellis is a consultant and entrepreneur with a passion for building businesses and improving the way they operate. With several efforts of his own currently underway Scott has set out to help those interested in starting their own businesses to succeed by overcoming the obstacles and unknowns, and applying "big business" principles learned from years of consulting, to small and start-up businesses. In a world where business is ever shifting, it is Scott's goal to help enable anyone who wishes to take their fate into their own hands to be successful. Scott's passion for small business is founded in the understanding that our businesses must evolve along with the our ever changing marketplace, that creativity is key and that simplicity is often far more powerful and effective than complexity. Scott is a Partner at BlackBox Technologies, a leading provider of web solutions from website design and development to business process automation for companies of all size. In his spare time Scott enjoys photography, basketball, running, SCUBA diving, hiking, music and occasionally sleeping! He has a Bachelors in Psychology from Purdue University and is a native of Indianapolis, IN.
Thanks for releasing this version. 
As your site has a lot of widgets, so I think it will significantly reduce the server usage. 
I'd love to do the 301 redirect, but it seems that with Wordpress's canonical URLs, redirects create infinite loops that ...
Great gallery. But I wasted 3 months to find a good free wordpress template and finally no one was customizable ...
Great!
I go immediately to try these tips.
Thank you and happy new year.
Ciao.
Hmmm. I don’t think that this solution is cross-browser compatible. I played around with a similar thing this past fall and had a problem with ‘Safari 2′. Surprisingly, it worked on every single browser (including IE flavors) as well as Safari 3, but not Safari 2.
Yeh, here’s my article that I published on the subject back in September…
http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/safari-and-flash-dont-play-well-together/
I couldn’t find a solution.
No follow up? (Sorry for the persistence.
)
@Shirley I wasn’t aware that Safari 2 couldn’t handle the overlays. I don’t think it’s a huge issue though as Safari 2 is such a rarity these days.
Thanks for the useful menu article. I am searching for the same solutions. Thanks anyway.
Is it just me and my bad luck? Ive found this solution in other places and it doesnt work for me… plus now my nav bar is all screwed up in IE. has anyone else had this not work? is there another solution somewhere? Its driving me crazy.
Shouldn’t z-indexed elements have to be absolutely, fixed or relatively positioned and into the same parent in order to them elements interact with each other?
If your elements are under different parents, the parents will determine the z-index that will determine the stacking.
Thank you so much!, super straight forward and perfectly helpful for my situation.
Thank you again Great JOB!
Thanks so much!! this is exactly what i needed and fixed my problem perfectly!!
hello sir,
i have already done all the things that were mentioned here..but still the flash is hiding my navbar in safari 4 browser only,…its working fine in ie8, ie7, mozilla 3.5 latest,,,and chrome,.,but am not able to find any solution for safari 4…
really appreciate ur help
thank u
I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work for me in IE8 or Firefox 3.5 – it works ok in IE7, not sure why!
i am having the same problem that my drop down menus are hiding the featured content slider…but i am unable to understand the solution given above …coz i am really a starter in wp …can any body plz explain a bit for me ….plzz
Doesnt work in Firefox 3.5 or IE8