I ran across an issue today where a drop down menu was dropping behind a flash object rather than in front. It seems to be a pretty common problem, so I thought I’d share the solution.

1. Start with the embed code

To make sure that the drop-down menu appears above the flash object, there’s a single parameter we need to add to the embed code. First of all, here’s what a normal YouTube embed code looks like:

<object width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z19zFlPah-o&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;amp;rel=0"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
<embed
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z19zFlPah-o&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;amp;rel=0"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
width="425" height="344">
</embed>
</object>

2. Add a parameter

We’ll need to add the parameter in two places. First we’ll need to add the following code after the other param fields (or before, it doesn’t really matter).

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

Next, wmode=”transparent” needs to be added to the actual embed tag like this:

<embed
wmode="transparent"
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z19zFlPah-o&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;amp;rel=0"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
width="425" height="344">
</embed>

That’s it!

So all together, this is how it should look when we’re done:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
<param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z19zFlPah-o&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;amp;rel=0" />
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
<embed
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
width="425"
height="344"
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Z19zFlPah-o&amp;amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;amp;rel=0"
allowscriptaccess="always"
allowfullscreen="true"
wmode="transparent">
</embed>
</object>

Hope that helps!

Image by Lili Vieira de Carvalho