Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

"I want to embed Windows Media Player into an HTML page. Where I run into trouble is if I have a drop-down navigation element that expands on top of the video area. When this happens Windows Media Player wants to stay on-top of and hide the drop-down menu. Are you aware of any reason this might happen. Other than setting the z-index, are you aware of any way to ensure that other elements that may need to sit on-top of the player can do that?"

Embedded video tends to stay on top of all other elements on a web page, regardless of whether the embedded player is Flash, Windows Media or QuickTime. While setting the z-index of the div where you embed the video can help solve the issue, a more reliable workaround requires modifying the player parameters for the particular video player you are using.

For Windows Media Player, the key element to include is a WindowlessVideo parameter in the object portion of your player embed. The basic parameter looks like this:

<param name="WindowlessVideo" value="-1">

That particular setting is unique to working with IE. The other thing you want to include is a wmode setting in the embed section of your code. By including wmode="transparent" it allows other html elements to naturally appear on top of the video as appropriate.