A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
An applet in a dhtml div layer shows through layers that are stacked on top of it.

Flash movies by contrast will obey their stacking if you pass param "wmode=transparent"

JUSTIFICATION :
Without it it is pretty impossible to use applets in conjunction with other dhtml content, like images, text, flash, as applets hog the experience,
poking to the front no matter where the have been authored to go.



EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
Macromedia had a similar 'bug', which they fixed thus:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/flash_top_layer.htm

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
My workaround is to remove all applets, as they basically poison any web experience, and replace them with flash.

Needless to say, this does nothing for the cause of java on the client
(Review ID: 185041) 
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Posted Date : 2006-08-16 20:20:35.0

N/A

This bug contains of two parts.  The first one is that applet is not transparent.  The second problem is that applet grabs focus when loading.

The first problem - transparency - can not be fixed due to the non-transparent nature of AWT components.  This is not in our control.

The second problem is well known.  See bug 4832148.  I am planning on closing this bug as a duplicate of 4832148, since if the focus problem is resolved, it seems that the first complaint in this bug (transparency) can be achieved by making the applet size 1 pixel instead of transparent.  
If submitter has any objections, or comments please update this bug within next 2 weeks.  I'll close this bug in two weeks otherwise.
  xxxxx@xxxxx    12-07-2004
  xxxxx@xxxxx   2004-12-07 17:05:52 GMT
I am re-opening this to access the feasability of transparent applets in Java Plugin, recognizing that this may require new features from awt.
Posted Date : 2006-08-25 20:20:27.0

See also:
http://www.softwarereality.com/soapbox/swing.jsp

Haha, the same is true for HTML dropdown boxes! It is because they are windowed controls. Nothing much can be done about this problem except to dynamically hide the windowed controls when necessary.

The transparency bug is preventing many many developers from using applets. More and more are shifting to flash & ActionScript 2. If Java wants to keep ground in the browser, please find a way to solve this problem.
Perhaps there is a way to introduce a LightweightApplet class, where only Swing components can be used and are rendered into a specialized canvas.

Using <div style='transparent'><iframe/></div> we can hide applet from the page.
To avoid grabbing of focus, try to use javascript like document.write(), to load appet in run-time.