This course will be retired on July 1, 2026. We recommend "Local Development Environments" for up-to-date content.
Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Well done!
You have completed Local Development Environments (2015)!
You have completed Local Development Environments (2015)!
Preview
Learn how to learn more about your IDE.
Additional Directions
- Keyboard shortcuts you cannot miss
- Step through the Help > Productivity Guide
- Get familiar with the Navigation Basics
- Check out all the links about Code Analysis
- Learn how to work with the different Tool Windows
- Debugger basics will give you some more tips and tricks. I plan on doing a deeper dive in a workshop.
Even more
- Entertaining video about IDEA from Technical Evangelist Hadi Hariri at JavaOne 2014.
- Keyboard shortcuts PDFs for PC/Linux and Mac
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
There's an old proverb that goes give
a person a keyboard shortcut and
0:00
they'll be more productive.
0:04
Teach a person how to learn shortcuts
on their own and change the world.
0:05
It was something like that,
maybe a little more profound.
0:10
Now I mentioned earlier that the
documentation in IntelliJ is pretty great.
0:13
Let's take a quick tour through it.
0:17
One thing that I wanted to point
out is that IntelliJ IDEA goes to
0:19
a lot of effort to make sure you
don't need to use your mouse.
0:22
It uses a mnemonic approach.
0:25
So any time you see something underlined,
0:27
it means that you can push
that key to make it focus.
0:29
It also means that editing
text has many handy shortcuts,
0:33
and you should know about them.
0:36
So let's go ahead and take a look.
0:37
So if you come in here and
we go under Help, we choose Help Topics.
0:38
It's gonna open up a pretty
awesome web page that they have,
0:41
I'm gonna bring that over here.
0:44
At full screen here.
0:50
Now I happen to know where the editing
is because I've been in this quite a bit
0:51
preparing for this course.
0:55
And I wanna show you if we
go under IntelliJ Editor
0:57
> Quick Start > IntelliJ Editor.
1:04
And then I wanna show you basic
editing procedures, okay.
1:09
So they've done a really good job.
1:15
Up here there's this key
map you can choose and
1:18
you can change it to
whatever you want to do.
1:20
So let's go ahead and
keep it where it's at.
1:24
So here it says to select the entire
text in the current editor tab
1:27
do one of the following.
1:31
Edit select all or Cmd+A, so that's
kind of common in all applications but
1:32
if you're here and you press Cmd+A,
bam, everything's all selected.
1:35
Selecting text with the navigation keys.
1:40
To select text from the current care
position, press Shift+Alt+Left and
1:43
Shift+Alt+Right.
1:46
Also you can select one character
at a time by pressing Shift but
1:48
if you also put Alt on there you
can jump a word at a time, right?
1:50
That's pretty cool, might have seen that.
1:52
That kinda works on all word
processing places up and
1:54
down resting your hold down shift and
it's kind of highlighting.
1:57
And you can cut copy that way.
2:00
You can do Page Up and Page Down a Mac.
2:04
That's with the Function key,
if you don't have that on your keyboard.
2:07
So if I do Shift+Function+Up.
2:11
Home and End on a Mac are with
the Shift+Function+Right, right?
2:15
So if I was in the middle of this, and if
I don't press down Shift I just hold Alt I
2:20
can jump my cursor around that way too.
2:24
So, I'm gonna go to the front of the line,
so
2:26
I'm gonna do Shift+Function+Left, and
I'm gonna go to the end and do Right.
2:28
So that's Home and End.
2:33
You might see there in
their dock it says that.
2:35
This is a super cool feature here,
this extending selection.
2:38
To select that, we're not going
to hold down the Shift key,
2:42
we're just going to hold down the Alt key,
I'm gonna press Up and
2:43
it knows that it extended
to the word that I was on.
2:46
But I can go more and
I can get the whole index as well.
2:49
And then it's gonna go up again, and
then it's gonna get all the arguments and
2:52
then it's gonna get the entire line.
2:56
Then it's going to get the entire
line including that and
2:58
then up again, and up again.
3:01
And then now we've got
the whole while block.
3:03
Now we got all the while.
3:05
So it knows about the code, right?
3:06
And then if I'm going to jump
it will get the whole class.
3:08
Pretty cool right?
3:11
And down works the same way so
you go down with that.
3:15
So, there's some multi-selection,
there's some more steps are here.
3:18
So, don't get overwhelmed.
3:22
I want to pop over really
quick to commenting, because
3:23
this is something that I find very helpful
when I'm trying to walk through and
3:26
really learn the language.
3:31
You might want to learn how to comment and
un-comment lines.
3:32
So, basically all you need
to do is get you cursor.
3:35
Here, like let's say we don't want this
reader anymore and I'm gonna comment it,
3:39
so I'm gonna press CMD+Slash.
3:43
See, It drops a comment at the front and
I can undo it as well.
3:45
I can do that with multiple lines, so
3:50
I can get rid of this whole thing
inside the try block here.
3:51
But, if you wanted to do
it properly with Java,
3:54
you can actually hold
Cmd+Alt+Forward Slash, we'll push that.
3:58
So see it's got the proper
star slash star there.
4:02
And you can undo with Cmd+Z.
4:04
All right, and here, this is a great one.
4:13
Adding, deleting and moving lines.
4:13
This is something that we do all the time,
right?
4:17
We wanna move lines around,
we wanna change them so,
4:18
one of my favorite things to do, let's say
that we wanted to duplicate this here.
4:22
We wanted to write something else so
4:26
if we do Cmd+D,
it will automatically duplicate the line.
4:27
So, I could've obviously
selected the line, copied,
4:30
pasted but
just duplicating it is pretty handy.
4:33
And delete an entire
line with Cmd+Backspace.
4:37
We can also move lines around.
4:40
This is pretty handy so I if do
Cmd+Shift+Up, see I can move this line and
4:44
see how it's jumping in the right place.
4:48
It's jumping in a different
part of the code there.
4:50
Pretty handy.
4:54
So I also wanted to show you that,
let's accidentally delete this line and
4:57
I can of course, undo it and
I can redo what I did.
5:01
So Shift+Cmd+Z or Shift+Ctrl+Z, right?
5:04
One thing also that I wanted to show,
let's say that I heard about another
5:09
editor and I got kinda jealous cuz I know
Sublime Text has this multiple cursors
5:12
thing and I was wondering if
this editor supported it.
5:16
So I could go over to the search,
I could come up here and
5:18
I could just start typing.
5:21
Well oh, look, multi-cursor,
it does have it.
5:23
Cool.
You should check this out,
5:26
this is really cool.
5:27
We'll go over this here in a little bit.
5:28
And if you scroll down,
5:30
you can see that they're all
kind of locked together, right?
5:31
So here's the selecting text that we had,
that we were looking at before.
5:34
So you kinda get in this one of
those documentation holes here but
5:36
it's a lot of fun learning what
you can do with this editor.
5:39
Here's the Help.
5:42
Are you feeling more productive already?
5:43
Well, check this out.
5:45
Over here in Help,
there's a thing called Productivity Guide.
5:46
This is great, it shows they're
grouped by different things and
5:53
they show how many times
that you've used them.
5:56
And I find this as well,
that I should use this.
5:59
And if you open it up, it'll show you
great hints about what's going on, okay?
6:01
So I think that
6:06
you should come back here whenever you
feel the itch to explore things more.
6:09
Don't get overwhelmed, but just keep on
coming back and learning more every time,
6:13
cause the more you learn this,
the more productive you'll be.
6:16
Oh, and finally, I wanna show you
the motherload of keyboard shortcuts.
6:20
So you go Help > Default Keymap Reference.
6:23
It's gonna open up a PDF.
6:28
Wow, right?
6:33
That'd make a great tattoo.
6:35
It makes sense that
the help is also large.
6:38
IDEs do a lot of things.
6:40
I've added a bunch of directions
on the teacher's notes.
6:42
Remember to use that productivity
guide every once and
6:45
a while to pick up new tricks.
6:47
After you get the hang of it,
6:49
show off your tricks to your friends,
it's more impressive than juggling.
6:50
If you find something that you love,
come and share it on the forum.
6:54
I plan to make several workshops
on the greatest IDE hits
6:57
showing off the favorite tricks and
tips from different editors.
7:00
Also Android Studio uses IntelliJ, so
7:04
all the stuff you earn here,
will work there too.
7:06
We have a amazing set of Android
questions here on Treehouse and
7:09
with your new super powers,
you're already productive.
7:12
Now that you're getting
comfortable with the editor and
7:16
navigating around,
let's practice it some more and
7:17
introduce some more advanced tooling,
right after you wrap up this exercise.
7:20
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up