Techniques are disclosed herein for re-ordering floating objects in an electronic document. An electronic document having floating objects is displayed in a first mode. Each floating object has an x-y location in the document and has a position on a z-order stack. In the first mode the floating objects are displayed in an x-y plane based on the z-order stack. Then, the electronic document is displayed in a second mode in which the electronic document is depicted as x-y plane slices. Each x-y plane slice corresponds to one position on the z-order stack. The x-y plane slices are displayed in particular order to depict the position of the floating objects on the z-order stack. A re-ordering of the x-y plane slices is displayed based on a request. Then, the electronic document is displayed in the first mode again based on the re-ordering of the x-y planes.