I am trying to create a fullscreen window that cover the whole screen using Java. This window must also have some transparency (about 30%-50% transparent). When saying whole screen, I do mean it cover everything (including the dock/taskbar/menubar in OSX/Linux/Windows), and when I say with transparancy, I mean a real-time transparancy and not just a hacked screenshot. Here is what I am aware-of/tried:
- Using Java Fullscreen API: while it creates a true fullscreen, you cannot have some transparency with it (only opaque color). One hack is to take a screenshot of the whole desktop and set it as background for the window, but this mean it is not real-time transparency.
- Setting window size to match screen dimension: while it fills the whole screen, in certain OSes (e.g. Mac OS X) the window will be rendered behind the dock/menubar, and not above it. However, transparency do work here.
- Using setWindowOpacity API: it work in the second case, but not in the first (Fullscreen API)
- Using setBackground with alpha: it work like the setWindowOpacity, but only in certain OSes. But also doesn't work with Fullscreen API.
- Use JFrame/JWindow/JDialog/Frame/Window: tried every window model I could, without any luck
So I am asking if this is possible through a another hack that I am not aware of, then I would be happy to hear about.
The goal is to overlay a semi-transparent fullscreen over the desktop.
- is possible only with visible TaskBar e.i.
.
GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getMaximumWindowBounds();
- otherwise you got and exception
.
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:
The effects for full-screen windows are not supported.
or by using brutte_force
to DirectX
freezed my PC twicw, only power_off to save PC's GPU
import com.sun.awt.AWTUtilities;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
public class JFrameOpacityExample {
private JFrame myFrame = new JFrame("Test Frame");
private boolean opacity = true;
private boolean resize = true;
private JButton button = new JButton("Opacity");
private JButton button1 = new JButton("Resize");
public JFrameOpacityExample() {
button.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
Object src = evt.getSource();
if (opacity) {
AWTUtilities.setWindowOpacity(myFrame, 0.50f);
opacity = false;
} else {
AWTUtilities.setWindowOpacity(myFrame, 1.0f);
opacity = true;
}
}
});
button1.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
Object src = evt.getSource();
if (resize) {
Rectangle dim = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getMaximumWindowBounds();
int h = dim.height;
int w = dim.width;
myFrame.setBounds(00, 00, w, h);
resize = false;
} else {
myFrame.setBounds(100, 100, 400, 400);
resize = true;
}
}
});
JPanel panel = new JPanel();
panel.add(button);
panel.add(button1);
myFrame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
myFrame.add(panel);
myFrame.setSize(400, 400);
myFrame.setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
JFrameOpacityExample jFrameOpacityExample = new JFrameOpacityExample();
}
});
}
}