Splash Screen that fades in smoothly...

Question

Is there some code somewhere?
Or how can I realize that with Swing?
Hope you can help me... ;)
Greetz
Sambale

Answer 1

Ok... Guess you didn't understand it right...
I want my splash screen to fade smoothly from 0%
(invisible) over 50 % (semi-invisible) to 100%
(full).
It means I need a method just like setTransparency(
values from 0 to 100).
D'you know what I mean?The top level Java components (Frame and Window) are always 100% opaque. In order to do what you want you have to use the java.awt.Robot class to grab a snapshot of the background where the splash screen will be displayed and then paint your semi-transparent image over the top of it using a thread and AlphaComposite to tweak the transparency over time. Not 100% accurate but good enough to fool most people. Here's an example showing the concepts.
import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.AlphaComposite;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.Point;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JWindow;
import javax.swing.Timer;
public class FadeImagePanel extends JPanel {
        private Image image;  
        private Image bgImage;
        private float alpha = 0.0f;
        private Dimension PREF_SIZE;
        FadeImagePanel(URL imageLocation) throws IOException {
            this.image = ImageIO.read(imageLocation);
            initialize();
        private void initialize() {
            captureBackground();
            startAnimation();
        private void startAnimation() {
            Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    while (alpha < 1.0f) {
                        try {
                            Thread.sleep(20);
                            repaint();
                            alpha += 0.05f;
                            if (alpha > 1.0f) {
                                alpha = 1.0f;
                        } catch (InterruptedException ie) {
                            ie.printStackTrace();
            t.start();
        public Point getPreferredSplashLocation() {
            Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
            int w = screenSize.width;
            int h = screenSize.height;
            int x = (w - image.getWidth(this))/2;
            int y = (h - image.getHeight(this))/2;
            return new Point(x,y);
        private void captureBackground() {
            Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
            int w = screenSize.width;
            int h = screenSize.height;
            int x = (w - this.getPreferredSize().width)/2;
            int y = (h - this.getPreferredSize().height)/2;
            Rectangle splashRectangle = new Rectangle(x,y,w,h);
            try {
                Robot r = new Robot();
                bgImage = r.createScreenCapture(splashRectangle);
            } catch (AWTException awte) {
                awte.printStackTrace();
        protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
            Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D)g;
            g2d.drawImage(bgImage, 0, 0, this);
            AlphaComposite comp = AlphaComposite.getInstance(AlphaComposite.SRC_OVER, alpha);
            g2d.setComposite(comp);
            g.drawImage(image, 0, 0, this);
        public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
            if (PREF_SIZE == null) {
                PREF_SIZE = new Dimension(image.getWidth(this), image.getHeight(this));
            return PREF_SIZE;
        public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
            final JWindow window = new JWindow();
            URL imageURL = FadeImagePanel.class.getResource("splash.png");
            FadeImagePanel fip = new FadeImagePanel(imageURL);
            window.add(fip);
            window.pack();
            window.setLocation(fip.getPreferredSplashLocation());
            window.setVisible(true);
            new Timer(3000, new ActionListener() {
                public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ae) {
                    System.exit(0);
            }).start();
    }