Here are some new UI-related tricks which you may find useful: 1. Docked Navigation Bar (View | Navigation Bar) now shows Run/Debug controls if the toolbar is switched off. 2. You may also switch off Tool Buttons (View | Tool Buttons) and get them to appear on demand by pressing Alt key twice (or Command key on Mac OS X). 3. If the new dark tooltips on Mac OS are too hard for your eyes, go to "IDE Settings | Appearance | Tooltip mode" and set it to "System". These new features are available since recent IntelliJ IDEA 10 EAP, so try them now and tell us what you think!

In IntelliJ IDEA 9 (Maia), we've slightly changed the way you run and debug your applications. You're still able to quickly run or debug a previous configuration (Shift+F10/F9), as well as to create and run/debug a temporary configuration in a context-dependent manner (Ctrl+Shift+F10/F9). However, it's now much easier to select and run/debug different configurations from the keyboard. In IntelliJ IDEA 9, you can choose a configuration that you wish to run with one of the following shortcuts: Alt+Shift+F9 to debug your application. Alt+Shift+F10 to run it. Invoking any of these actions displ

There's a lot of useful actions in IntelliJ IDEA that don't have shortcuts for many different reasons: they're not used too often or there's simply no more convenient key combinations left. For example, I often want to get access to VCS actions like Compare with latest repository version or Revert current file or even submit a single file with a quick NPE fix without opening a menu or going to Changes view. So how can I call any of these actions with a single shortcut? That's really easy: I just need to define my own Quick List and map it to a shortcut (Control-X in my case). After I've done t

IntelliJ IDEA 9 (Maia) lets you assign custom colors to arbitrary sets of files (Scopes) in Editor tabs or Navigation lists (Go to class/file, etc):This helps you even more quickly than before understand which class you are looking at: JDK, a library, or your own app. The feature is available in Maia builds that you can get from EAP under Settings/File Colors.