title: Java Applet z-index on Safari and beyond
body: <p>A well known problem with Java Applets in webpages is that browsers ignore the z-index of the applet tag vs. other components in the page.  No matter how you position and z-index elements in the page, applets will draw themselves on top of everything.</p>
  
  <p>There is a workaround, known as the iframe shim, as described here: <a href="http://www.oratransplant.nl/2007/10/26/using-iframe-shim-to-partly-cover-a-java-applet/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.oratransplant.nl/2007/10/26/using-iframe-shim-to-partly-cover-a-java-applet/</a>.</p>
  
  <p>However, this workaround does not work in Safari 3 or 4 in Windows (assuming the same for Mac).</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know a way to make it work in Safari?  </p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have ideas about how to pressure Sun to fix the underlying problem so we can avoid clumsy shims?  Here is a bug report on the issue, <a href="http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6646289" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6646289</a>, notice that it has been open for a year, however other bug reports go back many many years.</p>
  
  <p>This is so frustrating, don't Sun understand that this is the very sort of thing that has marginalized Java as a way of doing cool stuff in the browser?  I love you Java, but you are not helping your situation...</p>