To put it bluntly, flash is a z-index hog of epic proportions. It seems that when dealing with div layers it will automatically force itself to the top of the z-index pile. No matter how high you set the primary floating div layer index property, flash will always take over. Unless you put this little jobby into the flash object:

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

This tells flash to sit down, shut up and let the rest of the page take control of the layout. If flash was in high school she would be the attention seeking cheer squad. If only I had this fix back those days, life would have been better.

Another flash related problem that is very common in IE, is the activex content layer. Apparently Microsoft lost some lawsuit that doesn’t let IE interact with flash unless invoked. Often you get these grey dots around the flash object and it doesn’t run until you click on it. This has caused a lot of pissed off people to switch to FF but a developer cannot abondon support for IE (unfourtunatley) so here is the work around:

theObjects = document.getElementsByTagName(”object”);
for (var i = 0; i < theObjects.length; i++) {
theObjects[i].outerHTML = theObjects[i].outerHTML;
}

Include that in an external js script like so:

And voila, no more stupid IE bug. I like the idea of Microsoft actually losing a lawsuit but hate the way their monopoly affects everyone so badly. Boycott IE!