Option to insert layer greyed out dreamweaver CSS4

Question

Hello,
I installed dreamweaver CSS4 and the option to insert a later is greyed out. I previously used dreamweaver MX 2004 to create my site. Is there a new way to insert layers? Thanks Andrea

Answer 1

Murray, I'm going to get cranky here.
When using AP Divs in concert with Flash and also in concert with Spry and other Javascript, you certainly do have to put them on the page in the right order or your Spry menus will not fall over your  AP Divs in visually-appropriate layering. This makes them tricky.
The mantra that an AP Div is absolutely positioned relative to its containing element flies out the window in such situations. To be clear, one must re-think which containing element one is using...it doesn't not work...and the solution is to change one's thinking in terms of which containing element to use.
I have recently worked (and worked and worked) on getting such a page to function the same in all browsers. So you can't tell me that they all render the same, because they do not. Ultimately, they did, but mainly because I changed my code.
It is very possible that you have successfully internalized the order in which it is necessary to make things work from the very beginning (Good for you!) or you have heeded the generally trumpeted call to not use AP Divs. In constructing this particular page (a page with a large background image over which must be located numerous other bits, including a Spry Menu Bar), I worked from the top down as I usually do, and "top down" (top of the viewport from header to footer) is not always the same as "picture plane out" in stacking order.
Every browser except the Microsoft browsers must be reading my mind and my assigned z-order, and interpreting stacking as I do, as I work from the top down. Microsoft insists that APDivs that will later be expected to "lie down" under Spry Menus and so forth be coded and loaded BEFORE those Spry Menus show up.
So as I worked, I converted some of the AP Divs (conveniently positioned, but ultimately unworkable because of IE) to Relative Divs. It is not a system I use frequently, and it is not my usual system, and it is not the system I would necessarily recommend, but it is possible as a solution to an untenable situation.
Such is my experience, decidedly on a shorter calendar than yours, but there it is.
Beth