JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

When working with big projects we always come back to 10-20 items/files where we do the most of our work.

IntelliJ IDEA helps you collecting all these items in one place — ‘Favorites’. It’s easy to add a file, a class or a method to the Favorites by simply pressing Alt+Shift+F. You can also drag and drop items to the Favorites.

And now with ‘Favorites’ being a separate tool-window, just press Alt+2 (or Cmd+2) whenever you need to access one of your precious items again.

We’ve slightly redesigned Navigation Bar and added some new sweet features. Watch this short demo for the details and a general overview of NavBar abilities.

Did you know that IntelliJ IDEA 11 Diff Tool supports some of binary contents? Now, it’s not a problem to see changes from file history or a change list. Every binary content you’re able to open in IntelliJ might be compared in Diff Tool: UML diagrams, SWF files, of course images, and much, much more.

In IntelliJ IDEA 11 you can check your Regular Expressions while coding without leaving the IDE. Just invoke the ‘Check RegExp’ intention action on a regular expression and play!

Tip: You can turn any string into a regular expression by injecting RegExp language. Try the ‘Inject Language’ intention action.

We at JetBrains know how important it is to track what has been changed in your project from one version or revision to another. This is why IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 brings you new Diff Tools for comparing local directories, DB objects (Data Sources, Schemes, Tables). In later updates we’re planning on including even remote to local files comparison as well. Diff Tools are available via Ctrl+D, or from context menu, wherever you may need them.

Say, to compare two Data Sources (or Tables, or Schemes, come to that), all you need is select them in Data Sources tool window, and then invoke the Compare action either from context menu, or via toolbar:

Comparing two local folders is just as easy: the action is available in Project View file tree.

To run a single inspection in previous versions of IntelliJ IDEA you had to create a dedicated inspection profile for that or use “Run inspection on…” from inspection’s quick fix list. In IntelliJ IDEA X you can find and run inspection by its name on any scope without creating an inspection profile. Use Run Inspection by Name (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I) action anywhere to choose a desired inspection from hundreds of available,

then select a scope to run inspection on,

and get results.

This action is available since version 98.402 in Main Menu-> Analyze->Run Inspection by Name.

If you work a lot with WSDL, you will find new IntelliJ IDEA X refactorings, code completions and validations very handy. Be it schema or WSDL, import inside a WSDL document is not a problem anymore.

Also, we are looking forward to your feedback regarding WSDL.

Jersey is a reference implementation of JAX-RS (JSR-311). IntelliJ IDEA X will support some of the Jersey’s features. MVCJ is one of them. IntelliJ IDEA automatically detects JSP templates for your resource classes that simplifies navigation to them.

There are few small, but very useful improvements in XML editing will be available in IntelliJ IDEA 10. All of them are very handy when edit XML files like schemes, JSPs, MXMLs, etc. First of these improvements is inspection detecting unused namespace declarations.

Others include namespace prefix intentions which allow you to rename, remove or introduce namespace prefixes. Want to make you schema file lighter? Not a problem:

Rename in place:

Or introduce new namespace prefix:

Find usages works as well. Enjoy them in first IntelliJ IDEA X EAP soon.

Anyone working on large Maven projects knows well about how hard it is to keep in mind all the dependencies between modules and libraries; and even harder, to resolve conflicts between them. We’ve greatly improved Maven Dependencies Diagram to make this whole thing a lot simpler.
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