Hi there,

I am facing a problem with flash movies and firefox.
I have a course with several flash movies, one per slide. The problem is:

When a put a flash movie into a slide and try to click in a help tab, the contents of help tab is not shown. It is as if the contents of "help tab" was behind the flash movie.

But that only happens in firefox and works right in IE.
Is there any way to fix this in firefox?

Thanks.
ACT

Hi Alexi
This sounds like it will be an issue with the way that firefox is rendering the pages. First think of a web page as being made up of lots of blocks that hold the content all LAYERED onto the page in a stack of objects.
Now with the page all built you add another object, where in the stack of layers do you put it??
That's decided by the z-index value for that particular item. Usually menu items will be made to appear on top so has a higher z-index value.
It sounds like the flash movie item is grabbing the highest number so the help tab appears below it.
You can set the z-index for items with an action.
I would try either setting the pop up items to have a big z-index value OR the flash a low z-index. This will either force the help tab up or the flash down in the stack.
Nick

Hi Nick,

I have tried to put the Z-Index of the flash movie low, eg 0, but not found a way to set the Z-index of the help tab or contents tab.

When, in the master slide, I set a value for the Z-index of a button, that applies only to the button and not its content.

Only configuring the Z-index of the flash movies like 0 or 1 did not work.

Do you know how can I set the Z-index to the contents (tab) of a help buttom, for example?

Thanks.

Hi Alexi,
After a bit of digging at Adobe I've found a tech article on this kind of problem "A Flash movie in a layer on a DHTML page containing several layers may display above all the layers, regardless of the stacking order ("z-index") of those layers."
That sounds like what is happening here, its partly the render engine of the browser and partly the flash movie itself.
The suggested work around is setting the movies wmode. This parameter is AFIK supported by all of the main stream browsr but might be failing in the newer compatibility secton of IE7/8 due to the page description.
Try opening the xml (its the file 1.xml in the folder called 1)with the modules content in using notepad. Search for the name or the movie clip or shockwave to find the entry controlling the move.
This will all be wrapped up in two object tags.
Add this
<param name="wmode" value="transparent">
before the closing object tag and run the page, it may help.
It makes the background container transparent in DHTML pages, it might work in the page type that courselab uses to launch the module which is an xmlns ... MAYBE!!

LOL Hopefully someone will come up with something stunningly simple!!

OOPS!!
That was interesting!! You can see where I inserted the line of code.
You can try inserting this

param name="wmode" value="transparent"

and wrap it in angle brackets

Hi Nick,

I think this code is already there.
Below a copy of the code (maybe I am looking in the wrong place).

###################################
<export_content><![CDATA[<div id="OBJ_15_flashcontainer" ><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" style="position:relative; z-index:0; top:0px; left:0px;" id="OBJ_15_flashobj" width="100%" height="100%"><param name="movie" value="images/Movie1.swf" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed quality="high" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" name="OBJ_15_flashembed" id="OBJ_15_flashembed" src="images/Movie1.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="100%" height="100%" swliveconnect="true"></embed></object></div>]]></export_content>
###################################

sorry...here is the copy.
<export_content><![CDATA[<div id="OBJ_15_flashcontainer" ><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" style="position:relative; z-index:0; top:0px; left:0px;" id="OBJ_15_flashobj" width="100%" height="100%"><param name="movie" value="images/Movie1.swf" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed quality="high" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" name="OBJ_15_flashembed" id="OBJ_15_flashembed" src="images/Movie1.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="100%" height="100%" swliveconnect="true"></embed></object></div>]]></export_content>

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />

I don't know why I can not copy this...but the code is already there.

LOL It's always fun when it eats the code fragments.
The problem then is most likely in the new IE explorer render engine. There is another work around I've used before, I'll post a link to it later today.

Hi Nick,

I think this code is already there.
Below a copy of the code (maybe I am looking in the wrong place).

###################################
<export_content><![CDATA[<div id="OBJ_15_flashcontainer" ><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" style="position:relative; z-index:0; top:0px; left:0px;" id="OBJ_15_flashobj" width="100%" height="100%"><param name="movie" value="images/Movie1.swf" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed quality="high" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" name="OBJ_15_flashembed" id="OBJ_15_flashembed" src="images/Movie1.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="100%" height="100%" swliveconnect="true"></embed></object></div>]]></export_content>
###################################