differences between using wmode="transparent", "opaque", or "window" for an embedded object on a webpage
embed, flash, object, wmode
Solution
Here is some weak adobe documentation on different flash 9 wmode settings.
A note of caution on wmode transparent is here in the adobe bug trac.
And new for flash 10, are two new wmodes: gpu and direct. Please refer to Adobe Knowledge Base about wmode.
Problem
when embedding a Flash object with the `<object>` and `<embed>` tag, there is an attribute called `wmode`. It seems that most of the time, `wmode="transparent"` is the same as `wmode="opaque"` as the Flash doesn't actually have any transparent color so that the bottom HTML element is to be shown. As a result, `opaque` should be faster than `transparent` since it requires less processing for transparency, yet most of the time i see Flash object embedded with `transparent` instead of `opaque`. `opaque` is needed so that other HTML element won't be covered up by the Flash object (such as a menu item that pops up an extra sub-menu won't be covered up by the Flash object). By the way, is there formal documentation for `wmode`'s `opaque`, `transparent`, and `window`? I was only able to find blogs that describe it but not the formal documentation. thanks.