I previously asked this question about why my transparent fades weren't showing up or printing and it seems that the transparency feature in pdfs isn't uniformly supported.
So my new question is this: is there a way to draw something that gives the same visual effect as transparency without using that feature?
I'll use the same MWE:
\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{fadings}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\fill [blue!80!black, path fading=east] (0,0) --++ (90:0.3) --++ (0:6) --++ (-90:0.3) -- cycle;
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
