Transparently

While doing software development you might hear of change being introduced "transparently". What does this mean?

Transparency in this context is similar to how a looking glass is transparent. One can barely make out that it exists. Think of a biker who pulls down the glass visor of his helmet when troubled by wind blowing into his eyes. His sight of the road & beyond continue to function without his noticing the transparent visor layer in-between.

Similarly, when a change in introduced transparently on the server side, it means the dependent/ client side applications needn't be told/ made aware of this change on the server side. The old interfaces continue to work as is, communication protocols remain the same, and so on.

The above kind of transparency is different from the transparency of a "transparent person" or a "transparent deal" or a "white box system", where the internals (like thoughts, implementation, ideas, details, etc.) are visible.