Flash Geniuses - how can you do this?

[KNau]

Hey,

I've seen Flash banner ads where you can play a little "punch the monkey" game inside the ad - nothing special. But has anyone seen the abovetheinfluence.com ads on Yahoo games?

The ad sits in the top right cornor of the site just like any other, but when you roll your mouse over it the ad expands to create a small game that you can play, "Pressure Pack Attack". The game itself is brutally simple but what impresses me is that the ad can resize without effecting the table that it resides in. They have another ad where it expands into a huge logo that covers a big chunk of the site, same idea.

Since the resizing doesn't effect the tables or layout of the site, I figure they must be using the same technique that those annoying pop-up ads use that plant a Flash ad overtop of an HTML site without actually being a seperate pop-up window. But I can't find any info on how to do it.

I think it's a great idea for small banner ads or for demoing a game on your website without the user having to jump to a seperate game page. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[mahlzeit]

Using HTML layers maybe?

[KNau]

Yeah, I finally found a bit of information. Looks like you use DHTML layers and "absolute positioning"? Something like that. It is the same method the pop-up Flash ads use.

Odd that there aren't any comprehensive tutorials on the subject (that I've found at least) considering how prevalent the usage is. I'll keep looking and post any decent links I find, in case anyone else is interested.

[mot]

Well you can always open the source code of a page that uses this technique, it's all there.

[UnknownGuy]

I asked someone about this recently myself, though this a drop down version it might be able to clear things up. (The flash movie I believe is actually the size of the total drop down area, just transparent to allow things below to be seen).

http://willoughbyweb.com/menu.html

Edit:

If you right click before it is extended it still says the flash right click, so yes, the html is just "shoved" underneath.