Z-Order

The Z-Order controls how overlapping objects are displayed on a page. It's called the "Z-Order" because it deals with how objects are arranged along a page's Z axis.

In AutoPlay Media Studio, changing the Z-Order involves moving individual objects along the Z axis—either "forward" (further from the page) or "back" (closer to the page). You can do this easily by selecting an object and using the Z-Order tools in the Objects menu.

Objects that are further from the page ("in front") are displayed on top of objects that are closer to the page. Objects that are closer to the page ("further back") are displayed behind objects that are further from the page. Depending on the objects in question, an object in the foreground can completely or partially hide any objects that are "behind" it. (Transparent parts of an image, for example, will let other objects "show through.")

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Some objects don't respond well to Z-Order commands, and will pretty much just ignore any attempts you make to arrange them along the Z axis. (The worst troublemakers are the AVI Video Object, the Media Player Object, the Flash Object, and the Web Browser Object.)

The reason for this is simply that AutoPlay doesn't have much control over the Z-Order for these objects. They all want to be drawn "on top," and they don't care what any other objects have to say about it. (Technically, the rendering of these objects is handled by their external ActiveX controls, which means that they are constantly being drawn and re-drawn "on top" of the AutoPlay page, after all the more well-behaved AutoPlay objects have already been drawn.)

Unfortunately, there isn't anything you can do to force a Text Object to appear in front of a Media Player Object (and believe us, we've tried). Even if the Text Object is in front of the Media Player Object in the Z-Order, the Media Player Object will just keep rendering itself in front of the Text Object.

To ensure that all of your objects display correctly, you should prevent any of these "troublemaker objects" from overlapping on a page:

AVI Video Object
Edit Field Object
Flash Object
List Box Object
Media Player Object
Web Browser Object

Finally, keep in mind that things can happen differently at run time than they do at design time. There are times when the Z-Order might make things look like a big mess at design time, but still show up fine at run time; and there are situations where everything will look fine at design time, but the objects will start fighting it out at run time. Naturally, how things look at run time is more important, so make sure you test things out vigorously. And don't be afraid to experiment—getting the end result you want may take some trial and error.

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