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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Improved IntelliJ keymap

At my current client the whole team recently switched from an Eclipse based IDE to IntelliJ. Although some of us have used IntelliJ for a long time, most had not. Switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ can be hard. It took me about three to four weeks before I was more productive with IntelliJ. Now I do not want to go back anymore.

To make the transition more smooth I am looking into several ways to accomplish this. One of the things I made is a new keymap reference for IntelliJ. The default keymap reference contains a whole list of shortcuts but I find them sometimes hard to find. The new, improved, keymap should make the most used IntelliJ features really easy to find. The most used features are based upon my own experience and the IntelliJ productivity guide of my colleagues. The productivity guide shows which features of IntelliJ are used most often.

To create the improved keymap reference I basically did the following:

  1. Stripped about half of the features from the default keymap reference. The features present on the new keymap reference are the most used features.
  2. Made a clearer distinction between the different types of functionality the features belong to.
  3. In each feature group I made a distinction between individual features which belong together.
  4. Used a larger font and more contrast to make things stand out more.
The Windows keymap reference can be found here: IntelliJ Keymap Windows
The OSX keymap reference can be found here: IntelliJ Keymap OSX

Hope you like it.

If you have any suggestions for the keymap reference please let me know.