Initial Struggle:
I have been Eclipse user for almost 2+ years. Suddenly one day i stumbled upon intellij idea. Courtesy of my team mates.
Initially moving from Eclipse to Idea was overwhelming. Neither i had patience nor time to learn new IDE with its own set of shortcuts.
Still after lotta of good reviews about it, decided to give it a try. Well at first i failed at it. The reason i was still using eclipse as primary IDE, since Idea shortcuts were completely different than eclipse and they were quite strange that time.
Somehow decided to give it one more shot, and this time it did click with me. I struggled initally but survived. Believe me its worth the struggle. It surely is a most intelligent IDE, especially if you are working with Javascript. Eclipse has worst Javascript support and its pain. I know there are plugins for it, but they are useless.
Idea Ninja:
No one can use IDE efficiently without mastering the shortcuts. Idea has excellent reference for shortcuts. I suggest you look into the complete idea keymap from here
If you are eclipse user, here is the small idea keymap with corresponding eclipse shortcuts.
| Action | Eclilpse | Idea |
| Code Completion | Ctrl + Space | Ctrl + Space Ctrl + Shift + Space Ctrl + Alt + Space |
| Reformat code | Ctrl+Shift+F | Ctrl + Alt + L |
| Optimize imports | Ctrl + Shift+ O | Ctrl + Alt + O |
| Delete line at caret | Ctrl+D | Ctrl + Y |
| Replace | Ctrl + F | Ctrl + R |
| Find in path | Ctrl+H | Ctrl + Shift + F |
| Replace in path | Ctrl + Shift + R | |
| Step over | F6 | F8 |
| Step into | F5 | F7 |
| Step out | F7 | Shift + F8 |
| Resume program | F8 | F9 |
| View breakpoints | Debug View | Ctrl + Shift + F8 |
| Go to class | Ctrl + Shift + T | Ctrl + N |
| Go to file | Ctrl + Shift + R | Ctrl + Shift + N |
| Go to line | Ctrl+L | Ctrl + G |
| Recent files popup | Ctrl + E | Ctrl + E |
| Go to declaration | Ctrl + Click or F3 | Ctrl + B or Ctrl + Click |
| Go to implementation(s) | Ctrl+T | Ctrl + Alt + B |
| Type hierarchy | F4 | Ctrl + H |
| Show usages | Ctrl + Shift+G | Ctrl + Alt + F7 |
| Generate code… (Getters, Setters, Constructors, hashCode/equals, toString) | Alt + Insert | Alt + Shift+S |
Tips:
1. Learn to use Ctrl+J
Ctrl+J brings up the Live Template options based on where your cursor is. If you’re in Javadoc then there will be some Javadoc intentions, if you have code highlighted then there will be some surround intentions.
2. Learn to use Ctrl+Alt+T
Highlighting code and pressing Ctrl+Alt+T will bring up the “Surround With” menu.
3. Increase Your Heap Size
IDEA critics (rightly, in my experience) complain that it is slower than Eclipse. Well, your first step should be to increase the heap size. Locate your idea.exe.vmoptions file and open it with a text editer (IDEA works fine). My file is in C:\Program Files\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 7.0.2\bin. Change the -Xmx line to allow a bigger heap. Mine is set at -Xmx512m.
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