Rollover menu over an iframe

[mizu]

I have a flash rollover menu where part of the menu appears over an iframe. When I move my mouse over the parts of the menu that overlap the iframe, I lose focus on the menu disappears. Anybody know how to fix this?

[JAB Creations]

Yes, don't use flash for menus or iframes.

Eh... I've had experience with frames and unless you have special circumstances you shouldn't use frames.

Next, using flash for your menus?!

Unless people are searching for your site/page by name and everything under the sun is pointing to all the keywords you could dream of to your domain/page then DO NOT use flash for your menus!

Effective flash is used to only spice up an HTML/CSS/JS page. When you use flash for your menus spiders will not understand anything beyond, "umm, it's a flash object" and won't be able to follow the links. Some bots may have adapated to this but it's not professional to assume that they can.

If you're still going to try and troubleshoot the issue I am sorry but I have nothing constructive to suggest in that matter though I thought I'd give you my two cents from both experience and observation. :)

[tedster]

There are stacking order issues with both flash and iframes, so this could be tricky. By default, flash movies are "outside the DOM".

Others tell me that if you add this parameter to your flash object:

<param name="wmode" value="opaque">

...it places the flash object within the DOM. In addition, you might then try giving both the flash object and the iframe a z-index attribute, with the flash being a higher number than the iframe.

All this is just for IE 5.5+ -- and if it helps, it still needs to be tested on FF, Safari and so on. You've taken on a challenging combination of content here.

[samuil]

JAB Creations: You're quite right, but there is a good way to create flash menu and stay seowise. Object element allows to define fallback content, which (afaik) is interpreted by bots. Page created this way is able to be indexed, and is accessible for people who don't use flash. Fallback content could contain pure css menu or js menu.

[mizu]

Hi All

Thanks for all the info! I am really impressed with all the quick replies!

Unfortunately I am working on a company intranet and I do not have any say about the technoloy used. Therefore I have to make the flash menus work!

It seems like my problem is linked to the mouseover functionality, ie. when the mouse moves over the iframe, the focus shifts from the menu to the iframe, and the menu disappears. Any ideas?

[mizu]

Oh, sorry - I forgot to mention that I only have this problem in Firefox, not IE.