How to Create Translucent and Shaped Windows in java.

Hi all,

I am back after a long time. This time I want to tell you all how I set a window as translucent in java. It was a very cumbersome thing to do before recently. From JDK 6 update 10, java has this facility to set the window as translucent  and its very easy.

Recently I did this in one of my projects and wanted to share it with you all.

As of the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) Update 10 release, we can add translucent and shaped windows to our Swing applications.

The translucent and shaped window API was first added to the Java SE 6 Update 10 release as a private API. This functionality was moved to the public AWT package in the JDK 7 release.

Here is an example :

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import static java.awt.GraphicsDevice.WindowTranslucency.*;

public class MyWindow extends JFrame {
    public MyWindow() {
        super("MyWindow");
        setLayout(new GridBagLayout());

        setSize(300,200);
        setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

        add(new JButton("Just a Button"));
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Determine if the GraphicsDevice supports translucency.
        GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
 GraphicsDevice gd = ge.getDefaultScreenDevice();

        //If translucent windows aren't supported, exit.
        if (!gd.isWindowTranslucencySupported(TRANSLUCENT)) { 
 System.err.println( "Translucency is not supported"); 
 System.exit(0); 
 }

        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            public void run() {
                MyWindow tw = new MyWindow();

		// Set the window to 55% opaque (45% translucent).
                tw.setOpacity(0.55f);

		// Display the window.
		tw.setVisible(true);
	    }
        });
    }
}

To learn more please check this link.

Here is how you can select which methods to use according to your JDK version.

–
Regards,
Manohar Bhattarai (मनोहर भट्टराई)
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