Question: As per the title, it seems only Chrome isn't playign along. Note that form fields cannot be clicked on which are on the left portion of the screen. This only occurs on some pages (such as the Contact page). It appears that the #left\_outer div is overlaying the content. When I edit the css via Firebug or Chrome's dev toools, it works, when I edit the actual css and refresh, it does not.

Any ideas?

**LINK:** 

Thanks!

Answer: 
Usually when you have set the `z-index` property, but things aren't working as you might expect, it is related to the `position` attribute. 

In order for `z-index` to work properly, the element needs to be "positioned". This means that it must have the `position` attribute set to one of `absolute`, `relative`, or `fixed`.

Note that your element will also be positioned relative to the first ancestor that is positioned if you use `position: absolute` and `top`, `left`, `right`, `bottom`, etc.
Markt's answer (see first answer) is great and this is the "by definition" of the z-index property.

 Chrome's specific issue are usually related to the overflow property from the top container bottom.
So, for the following:

```
<div class="first-container">...</div>
<div class="second-container">
    <div ...>
         <div class="fixed-div> some text</div>
    <... /div>
</div>

```

And styles:

```
.first-container {
    position:relative;
    z-index: 100;
    width: 100%;
    height: 10%;
}

.second-container {
    position:relative;
    z-index: 1000;
    width: 100%;
    height: 90%;
    overflow: auto;
}

.fixed-div {
    position: fixed;
    z-index: 10000;
    height: 110%;
}

```

**the following actually happens (Chrome only, firefox works as expected)**  

The 'fixed-div' **is behind** the 'first-container', even though both 'fixed-div' and its container's ('second-container') z-index value is greater than 'first-container'.   

The reason for this is Chrome always enforce boundaries within a container that enforces overflow **even though** one of its successors might have a **fixed** position.

I guess you can find a twisted logic for that... I can't - since the only reason for using fixed position is to enable 'on-top-of-everything' behavior.   

So bug it is...