@Razvan – unfortunately, unlike earlier Matlab releases, R2013b relies on Java 7. One of the changes that Oracle made in Java 7 was to prevent modification of an open window’s transparency, which was possible in Java 6. As consequence, setFigTransparency, blurFigure and any other Matlab utility that relies on this feature no longer work. AFAIK there is no fix for this.

Is it possible to update setFigTransparency function in order to work in the latest MATLAB? It would be great if we could continue to use it after R2013b.

Note that AWTUtilities simply calls the setOpacity method on the Window in Java 7. There are some conditions:
The TRANSLUCENT translucency must be supported by the underlying system
The window must not be in full-screen mode (see GraphicsDevice.setFullScreenWindow(Window))

and also (new)

The window must be undecorated (see Frame.setUndecorated(boolean) and Dialog.setUndecorated(boolean))

MATLAB figures are decorated

@Martin – indeed so, and you will need to modify this again in HG2, as described here…

jFigPeer = get(handle(gcf),'JavaFrame');
jWindow = jFigPeer.fHG1Client.getWindow;
com.sun.awt.AWTUtilities.setWindowOpacity(jWindow,0.7)

@Dirk – welcome back!

Unfortunately, all GUI controls added via Matlab, including uicontrols and javacomponents, use a heavyweight java.awt.Panel container, rather than a lightweight javax.swing.JPanel. Unfortunately, the heavyweight Panels, unlike lightweight JPanels, cannot be made transparent (at least on Windows). This means that even if the control or component is made transparent, this would still have no effect since their containing Panel is opaque. See an interesting discussion on this here.

Note that while individual controls are opaque, the entire figure window can be made fully or partially transparent, as I have shown in the main article – the trick is not to update any specific control’s opacity but to work at the Java Frame level.

Hi Yair,

I had the same idea of using the GlassPane to overlay a JComponent with semi-transparent background to blur the ContentPane. This would be a nice solution to your riddle which goes without a helper figure, but it seems that neither the GlassPane nor other child components of the LayeredPane (except the ContentPane) get painted at all. Maybe the paint method of the RootPane (com.mathworks.mwswing.desk.DTRootPane) is responsible for this. Any ideas?

@Julien – there may be a way to do this directly using the figure hierarchy, but I never tried it. Try using one of the other figure containers, not necessarily the glass pane. As an alternative, you can use the overlay transparent window trick mentioned in this article to draw whatever you wish on top of the uicontrols, as explained in the blurred figure window article.