exact placement of java applet

[timbres1]

Good morning everyone.
I'm building a new site with a gif that has a hole in it; in that hole I want an applet to appear. It's a slide show that fades any number of images in and out.

How do I specify exactly where the images will appear? Can it show over a gif that's not a background image? The hole is transparent.

Thank you for your expertise, I can't get a response from support and it's holding me up.

[edited by: tedster at 7:07 pm (utc) on Jan. 24, 2005]
[edit reason] remove specific java developer [/edit]

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, timbres1.

Sounds a bit tricky - I assume you want the applet to appear "under" the gif, so the slideshow show through the transparency - correct?

I would try placing the gif with absolute positioning, using a z-index to layer it above the applet. I can't say if this will work - I haven't touched a java applet in a long while. But it's worth an experiment.

[timbres1]

Thanks.

Actually I was wondering if you could overlay an image with an applet, but I left that area transparent just in case. Forgive me for my ignorence but what would "absolute positioning, using a z-index" look like?
Is there a better way to have a slide show in a certain area - maybe using flash? I'm trying to keep it small for loading purposes since it'll be my index page.

Thank you

[edited by: Woz at 9:51 am (utc) on Jan. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] No sigs please, see TOS#13 [/edit]

[tedster]

First, even though you may have transparent pixels in you .gif, the image still takes up a full rectangle. Then further, as far as I know, browsers only put Flash movies "on top" - and I fear the same may be true for a java applet. That's why I said this would be an experiment.

Absolute positioning is a CSS approach - here are some references.

positioning tutorial:
[w3schools.com...]

z-index property
[w3.org...]

If this approach fails, as I think it may, you might get the effect you are after by surrounding the applet in a table cell, where the neighboring cells have slices of the original gif. If the transparent area of the original is not a rectangle, this will probably require some fancy compromises to get a satisfactory look.

[timbres1]

Thanks very much for that information.
I'm already up to around 260kb BEFORE the slideshow,
so I'll have to rethink my interface gif.

A flash movie on top would work fine and I just found some information on transparent flash animation with absolute positioning.

Now if I can just find my Flash installation disk...
(I lost a partition with that app)

[tedster]

Glad I helped you get rolling on this. Don't forget that many elements can have a background - divs, tables, cells and so on. You aren't stuck with just the body background.