Google Chrome, Flash and z-index wrong behaviour

Question

Google Chrome is displaying the z-index of a Flash video incorrectly.

Take a look at http://maxusglobal.com/ in Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Now take a look at it in Chrome.

The big video at the top of the page should have a "preview" image z-indexed over the top of it. It does in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not Google Chrome.

This doesn't seem to be a WebKit thing, but specifically a Chrome bug.

I have tried all the wmodes, (opaque, window and transparent), but this doesn't fix it. I also changed the z-index of the Flash box, but it is still not working.

Answer 1

Add wmode="transparent" to your <embed> tag. Like the following.

<embed wmode="transparent" 
       height="314" width="516"
       type="application/x-shockwave-flash" 
       id="player"
       name="page_player" 
       src="/swfs/player.swf" 
       allowscriptaccess="always"
       allowfullscreen="true" 
       flashvars="file=/attachments/files/u_t_o_N_1.mp4">

And hide the div of the hello image if that is not necessary.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

There are a couple of options here as I see them:

Option 1

Use the wmode tag and you need to set this as the object is rendered. Adding it later will not work
(ref1) (ref2)

Using opaque should allow you to target the object with CSS z-index styles. Be aware that you should set this value in the <embed> tag as well as as a param
(ref3) (ref4)

Option 2

Hide the object until a user has clicked on your preview button. I spent ages tracking down the javascript that you used before I noticed that Sotiris had said the same thing. I believe this is your code here:

$('#play_video_box').click(function(){

if(app.isiPhone() == "iphone" || app.isiPhone() == "ipad"){
return true;
}

$(this).fadeOut('fast');
$('#page_video_preview_image').fadeOut('fast');
var player = document.getElementById('player');
player.sendEvent('PLAY');
return false;
});

I would amend one line to:

$('#page_video_preview_image').fadeOut('fast',function(){$('#video_wrapper').css('visibility','visible')});

And use CSS to set visibility to hidden by default. Depending on your no javascript support requirements you may need to modify that.

The third link provided here is a rather good article on wmodes and how they work - I recommend checking that out if you decide to go with option 1 and run into trouble.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

I too was having a problem with the z-index of embedded Flash objects when using Google Chrome 8. Everything worked perfectly in IE 7. lnrbob hit the nail on the head with his option 1 solution. I had set wmode to opaque in the <embed> tag; but I neglected to add wmode as a <param> tag. Once I added <param name="wmode" value="opaque"/> between the <object> tag and the <embed> tag, the z-index started to work perfectly in Chrome without breaking IE.