Swing Hacks

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Chapter 1, Basic JComponents

#12 Add Translucence to Menus

HACK

H A C K

#12

Add Translucence to Menus Hack #12

In this hack I will show you how to add true translucency to your menus with

only a slight modification to your program.

Computer interfaces are pretty sophisticated these days. Years ago, we con-

sidered ourselves lucky to simply have menu bars at all; now, we need

menus with sophisticated effects like animation, shadows, and translucency.

You’ve already seen how to achieve visual effects by overriding the

paint( )

method of a parent component and then rendering the children into a buffer

[Hack #9]. It would be nice to do the same thing here, but there’s just one small

problem. Overriding the

paint( ) method of the JMenu wouldn’t do any good

JMenu menu = new JMenu("File");

mb.add(menu);

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Open"));

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Save"));

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Close"));

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Exit"));

menu = new JMenu("Edit");

mb.add(menu);

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Cut"));

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Copy"));

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Paste"));

menu.add(new JMenuItem("Paste Special.."));

frame.getContentPane().setLayout(new BorderLayout( ));

frame.getContentPane( ).add("North",new JButton("Button"));

frame.getContentPane( ).add("Center",new JLabel("a label"));

frame.getContentPane( ).add("South",new JCheckBox("checkbox"));

frame.pack( );

frame.setSize(200,150);

frame.show( );

}

}

Figure 1-29. Menu with a drop shadow

Example 1-27. Putting the custom combo box into action (continued)