Newb alert: moving from Eclipse to IntelliJ
I think what I want is "simple", but looking at menus, help and doc hasn't found it. (I did visit their help and website links; I'm probably not looking for the right thing.)
For my main code editing experience, I like to have 3 main window panes:
Right side, large main area: source code editor
Left, upper part: project files in a browsable outline
Left, lower part: structural view of the current class I'm editing (method names, member fields, etc)
For IntelliJ, I can get the Project Structure on the left, OR the Structure of the individual class, but I'm having trouble getting the left half of the screen to show both the Project and Class hierarchy.
I've tried to dragging and dropping, like from Eclipse, but that doesn't seem to work the say it did in that other IDE. (not arguing that it should, just something to try)
I think there are some general concepts that I might be missing. And when I use IntelliJ help or Google for things "view", etc, I'm getting some other meaning of the word.
General questions:
How do it (or CAN I?) generally arrange the IntelliJ IDE to look the
way I like? I'm happy to do some reading, but haven't seen this in
the table of contents.
Is it done by clicking and dragging?
Or maybe it's that IntelliJ just uses different verbiage to describe these IDE elements, and if you now the correct language, then maybe Google
promptly brings up the answer?
Any other Eclipse -> IntelliJ IDE config advice would also be welcome.
This is really easy to achieve. Instead of dragging the title bar of your panel, drag the button that opens the panel (see my screenshot). You can fully customize your view but dragging those buttons to either of the 4 panels (right, down, left up and left down).
Since you're asking for more advice on migrating, here's my approach to learn IntelliJ shortcuts as an Eclipse user. It's my blog, so if it is seen as advertising, I will remove it.
Related
I had been using Eclipse 3.x for a few years and while I had a few issues w.r.t. its stability and performance, I never had any particular annoyance with the UI itself...
Now that the new and shiny Eclipse 4.2 is out of the oven, it feels more stable and somewhat snappier, but I instantly felt a dislike for some details of its UI:
I find the "curved" look of the main toolbar distracting and it seems to me that it does not mix well with any other element in my desktop. It could just be a color issue, but the toolbar is prevalent enough to merit a specific mention.
The default colors do not work well with the TFT/TN displays of the laptop and both desktop computers that I am using. The various gradients seem completely washed out, the tab separators are practically invisible and the toolbar curve looks totally weird.
It's also almost impossible to tell which view is active - Eclipse 3.x used a unique blue color for the active tab header. Juno uses a color-reversal in all inactive tabs, which probably sounds more visible, but in my opinion that effect is lost because the active tab is still in a shade of gray which is lost in the overall gray-ness of the new UI...
So, how do I get back to a more reasonable look and feel? Is there somewhere a theming option that would help?
PS.1: I use Eclipse/GTK on Linux...
PS.2: What happened to all the colors in Juno, anyway?
PS.3: Can we keep the new splash screen, though? That one, I like...
Apparently, the Eclipse developers were kind enough to leave us an easy way out:
From the Window menu, select Preferences.
Expand the General category in the Preferences dialog tree.
Click on the Appearance sub-category.
On the left side of the window, a Theme drop-down menu will appear - click on it.
Select Classic in the Theme drop-down menu.
Most important: you need to restart Eclipse after that, even though no hint to that effect appears.
This setting is mentioned in several blog posts, which for some reason I could not find until I started using terms such as "awful" and "ugly" in Google. It seems that I was not the only one to find the new theme unbearable...
There is another way documented here.
This goes a lot further than the switch to classic theme and makes it look like 3.x.
The problem with the Juno L & F is that its great on monitors with 1600x1050. But my work PC has 2 screens that are 1280x1-24. Not so great!
I found a way to make Juno look like Indigo: I know there are new fancy themes around but I'm not willing to spend time on it.
My solution is just to copy the Indigo css_prefs files into Juno directory
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings
The file you have to look for are
org.eclipse.e4.ui.css.swt.theme.prefs and org.eclipse.wst.css.ui.prefs
If you don't have them you can download from my blog http://www.venturin.net/2013/04/04/eclipse-juno-looks-ugly-in-linux-mint-14-nadia/
To restore traditional style tabs on more recent versions of Eclipse, edit e4_classic_winxp.css and change swt-simple: false; to swt-simple: true; (this assumes you are using the default Classic theme).
On Eclipse Kepler this file is located in:
eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.platform_4.3.2.v20140221-1700\css
On Eclipse Mars this file is located in:
eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.ui.themes_1.1.0.v20150511-0913\css
I use an older plugin called Veloeclipse for editing Velocity templates in Eclipse. There's been no development on this since 2009, which isn't a problem because it's mainly just for syntax highlighting and format validation. The really annoying thing about it, however, is that when I try to do Show In to view the current Velocity template within my Package Explorer or Project Explorer, the only available option is Properties. That's not really useful. I really need to be able to get to the file in one of the regular explorer views.
So I have sort of two questions:
Is there a way to configure this without having to monkey with any code? A configuration file or something? I've grepped through my Eclipse installation and haven't seen anything, but I'm hoping that there's something I'm missing.
So assuming that the answer to my first question is no, how do I go about modifying the plugin code so that it will show more than the Properties view in the Show In menu? Most of what I found on the plugin development wiki comes from the other direction: how to make your view or perspective appear in the Show In menu.
Any help with this would be hugely appreciated!
Try to check the plugin source code. it might do something different than other editors. What I mean is that the show in menu item that you have there is not the usual extension point but a hard coded context menu option.
When working with MVC in Eclipse you might often have a model, view, and controller all with the same name open at the same time. When looking at each of the file tabs, you won't always know which is which and have to click through them, which can be quite a hassle sometimes. I've heard of being able to color code files based on the path in some editors. For example, tabs with path model could be set as green, path controller set as yellow, etc. Is this possible in Eclipse, or is there a plugin for something like this? If not, what do you do to more easily differentiate between the tabs? I've heard of people always opening a MVC set in a certain order. So you'll know the leftmost tab is the controller, the right most is the view, etc. However, that must also mean you need to open all 3 files each time. Any better tips or tricks?
Another thing about the file tabs that can be annoying is that when you have more files that can't fit in one line, eclipse pushes off to an arrow which you have to click to see the rest. It seems to be random which tabs get pushed off there, maybe the least used ones, I have no idea... This coupled with the problem above gets kind of annoying. I was trying to find a way to disable this and just show tabs that can't fit in one line to show up on a second line, but surprisingly couldn't find such an option (then again you also can't wordwrap without a plugin).
Hopefully there are some solutions to these two problems. Thanks.
Maybe this can be helpful
http://www.dipherence.com/2011/03/20/full-coloured-eclipse-navigator-plug-in/
With the latest version of Eclipse (Kepler 4.3.1, build M20130911-1000) when two or more files with the same base name are opened, tab will show also the parent directory name.
I'm working on some reflection stuff using Java across XML files. The process would be made much faster and less prone to error if I could get content assist to behave like a tree in a small window off to the side, but more than by my current cursor location.
My question is can this really be done without reinventing the wheel too much? Essentially I want to display a list of classes, choose a class, then drill down a TreeView similar to the outline view Eclipse has for a current open file and at some point I click a button below and it generates the desired XML formatted text I would have typed manually, this is generated based on whatever in the tree I have highlighted.
I've designed and begun work on the front and back end, but the piece that keeps eluding me is harnessing Eclipse's content assist to gather a list of practically anything I could possibly call in a given project.
Can this be done? I've been combing Eclipse's documentation for a few days and fighting with the source download dying halfway repeatedly.
I am not 100% if that's it but I had an eclipse plugin with spider in it's name in mind, which does what you described.
Maybe it is this one: http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/plugin_details.jsp?id=202
Furthermore when writing Eclipse plugins, it is useful to press ctrl+shift+f1 (eclipse plugin spy) once having worked in the pde this should be possible.
It shows you info about all possible extensionpoints refering to your current view.
I often end up with lots of empty panes in Eclipse that can only be minimized but not destroyed. How do I close these?
Update:
In this screenshot you can see two minimized on the upper left and several on the right hand side. In the center are four more. They only seem to be restorable in the Debug mode.
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/9900/eclipse1.png
this happened to me, too. What worked for me (based on FilmJ and douncon's comments) was to open a class file, then drag that tab over the top of the empty pane.
Select Window -> Reset Perspective. That should reset the current perspective (what you call "mode") to its' initial state, (hopefully) closing all irrelevant views.
Something seems terribly wrong with your Eclipse. Maybe you should reinstall it. It is possible that you installed a buggy plugin.
First of all, what do you mean by pane? Eclipse has:
Windows (Eclipse itself, e.g. instance)
Documents (tabs)
Views (properties, tasks, explorer, etc)
If by 'pane' you mean document editors, you have problems either with your Eclipse version or most likely one of the installed plugins.
Each View also can be closed (except maybe some project types (perspectives) of which I'm not aware). For CDT (C/C++) you can close practically everything.
I'll recommend you download latest Eclipse version with no plugins, extract it to different folder, and check if that happens again. If yes, please explain more in details (like Eclipse version, perspective you are using, any side plugins, etc).
Also a good places are Eclipse community forum, mailing list and bugz :-)
I had the same problem. For me it helped to go into the right perspective and activate the functionality that caused the window in the first place. Once I reactivated the functionality, in my case "QNX Memory Analysis perspective", I was able to close all the windows one by one.
The conclusion is you have to refill the empty windows with content and then you will be able to close them properly.
So, it's really very easy for this to happen, if you open an editor that's incompatible with the existing editor, you can often end up having to place it outside of the tab list in one of your editor panes, then you might clear or copy that, typically while trying to add that view to a tab list.
In any case, what it's done is create a new editor, and all you need to do is drag some file to that empty editor window giving it some form of context, then close it.
I had the same issue. I followed #zvikico, but instead of just resetting, I first reset and then closed all the perspectives. Please follow the following to fix the problem. It worked for me:
Window -> Perspective -> Reset perspective..
After resetting follow below:
Window -> Perspective -> Close All Perspectives