Introduction

JSCookMenu 2.0 treats IFRAME/FLASH/SELECT boxes more carefully. The result is better look and expanded usability of the menu.

Below is a case study for Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and Opera on these trouble makers.

Browser: IE

For IE 5 to 6, JSCookMenu 2.0 implements an iframe masking method s.t. the DHTML menu can be displayed over select boxes / flash / iframes. IE 7 removed window based controls completely and thus iframe masking method is disabled.

P.S., I know a lot of people bash IE for its lack of features or non-conformance, besides its security problems. From the view of a JavaScript menu developer, however, IE 6 actually works very well considering its age. IE specific compiler control greatly simplifies some of the much needed fixes. I wish FireFox and Opera could provide such feature.

Browser: FireFox

FireFox 1.5 does not use window based controls, so nothing special need to be done for JSCookMenu to work. I am not too sure about older browsers.

Browser: Opera

Opera 9 does not use window based controls, so nothing special need to be done for JSCookMenu to work. As for older versions, although select boxes are not window based controls, iframes and flashes are. So JSCookMenu will have to hide overlapping iframes and flashes for 8.x and older versions of Opera.

I would strong suggest to upgrade Opera browser to version 9, not only because it is free, but also because it has several important bug fixes needed to display the special effects of JSCookMenu 2.0.

As a side note on Opera, while Opera browser can fake as IE, its rendering of CSS is very different from that of IE. Yet, Opera users continue to devise ways to hide the identity of Opera due to blockage by some sites. This in turn creates a serious problem for JavaScript developers who actually try to coup the differences between IE and Opera. The site specific preference of Opera 9 is a welcome change :)

Browser: Safari

The latest version works well with JSCookMenu.

Flash

To display properly over flash, make sure the flash wmode is set to "transparent" if you are using <object> tag for embedding the flash. For older versions of JSCookMenu, use <embed> tag instead of <object> tag to avoid hiding the flash. Note that Opera 7.x does not support wmode for <object> tags, but it does support <embed> tags. Opera 8.x supports wmode for <object> tags. <embed> tag is NOT part of XHTML specification although recent versions of IE, Mozilla and Opera all supports it. The following flash is embedded using <object>.

Here is an article on how to embed Flash.

Test