[SOLVED] Drop down menus disappearing because of a Flash object
 

First of all, want to say how much I appreciate the Atahualpa theme. Been using it for websites for the past year and I'm recommending it to other web developers.

We ran into a problem today when we launched a new website for our client. (www.jma-it.com)

The drop-down menus (spawned from the category menu, which we converted to a page menu) are not displaying for Internet Explorer and Chrome users who visit the home page. The drop down menus work in Firefox and they work on all sub-pages for various browsers. The problem appears to be a Flash object we have snuggled underneath the menu bar. I added a non-breaking space in the header settings to see what was going on. It moved the Flash animation down and showed that the drop-down menus look like they are behind the Flash object when viewed with IE and Chrome.

Here is the Header code:

%image <div id="menu-center">%cat-center</div>
<?php if( is_front_page() && !is_paged()) { ?>
<div id="carousel" align="center">
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0" width="100%" height="300px">
<param name="movie" value="carousel/presentation.swf?xml_path=carousel/slides.xml" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
<embed src="carousel/presentation.swf?xml_path=carousel/slides.xml" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="300px" allowFullScreen="true"></embed>
</object>
</div>
<?php } ?>

Can we fix this with z-index or is there a bug here?

Thanks for any advice!

Chuck

I should add that we're using Atahualpa 3.5.2 and WordPress 3.0.1.

Try adding wmode="transparent" to the embed code. See example below.

<embed src="carousel/presentation.swf?xml_path=carousel/slides.xml" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" height="300px" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent"></embed>

Thanks for the advice. That seems to have solved the issue for Google Chrome, but IE is still not showing the menus.

This may not fix the problem but do you have the sub-menu bug fixes in place?

I installed the sub-menu fix but that didn't resolve the problem. That was uploading one file, right?

Guess I'll move on to seeing if z-index resolves the problem.

Also you might want to try turning off the menu animation. That has caused issues with some configurations.

Turning off the Javascript menu animation has no effect.

what plugin are you using?

We are using:

All-In-One Cufón
Announcement and vertical scroll news
Contact Form 7
Executable PHP widget
MailChimp
Quotes Collection
TS Custom Widgets
WP Events Calendar

Are any of these controling the flash or is that hand made? I was trying to repro it, but can't get to the flash

The Flash carousel animation is created by special software called Flash Slideshow Maker.

I may try and generate the Flash animation using another program to see if the Flash is causing the problem.

Here is a link to one I have seen on WordPress.org. Here is their demo page. Not sure if it will fix the issues but it looks kind of interesting.

And another flash carousel menu maker I just tested and it did work is on this site. This one has an online configuration tool for creating the xml.

Thanks, Larry. I'll test these out over the weekend on my mirror of the production site.

Larry: I generated a new carousel animation using the software from FlashXML.net. This not only solved my issues with the drop-down menus with IE, but it gave me the customization I needed to meet the client's wishes. On the other hand, this isn't really a Flash animation, so this doesn't resolve the questions about Flash objects being placed underneath the menus in Atahualpa. It's possible that this is only an issue with the Flash animation I created with the other problem. It might be worth researching this issue more because more people will be doing what I was doing with the animation under the menu.

Thanks for the help. I'll make a donation soon and subsequent donations when I use the theme for other projects.