Stacking order of Flash menus

programming flash
1

I’m going insane and have posted this dilemma on several forums, but haven’t had any responses.

The main navigation on the site I’m currently developing is a horizontal dropdown menu created in Flash. Several pages also have their own side navigation, which is also created in Flash.

Both the top navigation and side navigation(s) are embedded using code that refers to an swfobject.js script taken from http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/. (One of the purposes for using this embed method is to get around IE’s active content security annoyance.)

The top navigation works fine in Safari. However, hovering over any of the side navigation buttons produces a flickering hand/arrow cursor, rendering the hyperlinks inactive. These side navigations seem to be blocked by the dropdown menu of the top navigation (because of the required height of the movie due to the dropdowns).

The top and side navigations in IE appear to both function properly on the surface. However, there’s a problem when you click on a side navigation item within the Did You Know? dropdown: if you go back and click on the Did You Know? button again, the menu now hides behind the side navigation.

I thought a workaround to this problem would be to simply create plain HTML hyperlinks for the side navigation(s); however, these links are also inactive in Safari because of the Did You Know? dropdown.

Is there some sort of script to force one menu to be on top of the other when hovered over? Or some other solution to this crazy problem? I’ve been troubleshooting this problem for weeks and weeks and weeks and need to go live with the site soon!

Here’s a link to a page containing both the top and side navigations:

Laura

2

The following code will move the target to the top:
container_mc.setChildIndex(event.target as MovieClip, container_mc.numChildren-1);

3

Could you please explain a little more? The most experience I’ve had with Flash is in building navigation menus and haven’t had the chance to delve into AS too much yet.

Wildflower

4

There’s apparently a structural problem with the navigation SWF; topNav mouse events are propagating through the dropdown menu to the sideNav and activating rollover events.
(I assume that the topnav and sidenav are contained within the same SWF.
This is probably why the problem is associated with the “Did you Know?” menu; it’s directly over the sidenav.
Not sure how to solve this unless I actually look at the fla and actionscript.

BTW, how did you create this Flash file without delving into actionscript?

5

The top and side navs are two different SWFs; you can access them here:

TopNavigation

Side Navigation

Unfortunately, I’ve been working full time and going to school full time for the past four years; hence, no time for learning AS. I just learned enough (and followed tutorials) to create navigational menus.

Wildflower