The family of education resources for IntelliJ IDEA welcomes a new member! Now, in addition to “What’s new” videos, documentation, blog posts and screencasts, the IDE Features Trainer plugin is available to help you learn the shortcuts for the most used IDE actions. The current version includes 5 modules: Editor Basics, Completion, Refactoring, Code Assistance and Navigation, each consisting of several lessons.
Let’s take a look at how this works. All plugin info and controls (like tasks and learning progress) are located in the Learn tool window, located near the 1: Project stripe button. To begin learning, set focus to this tool window and choose a module. You will be automatically redirected to the task of the first lesson (or, if you’re resuming learning, the task where you left off).
Each lesson consists of a sequence of tasks. In most of them, you’ll need to invoke the correct action shortcut to progress, while a few may require you to write a certain piece of code.
By default, lessons open tasks in scratch files. Some lessons, however, require a specially pre-configured project (‘Learning project’) to work correctly with the JDK. Fortunately, the plugin itself will warn you about this and will create the necessary project automatically.
WHO SHOULD USE THIS PLUGIN?
We’ve created this plugin primarily for newcomers to IntelliJ IDEA or those who have recently migrated from another IDE. Its goal is to give you basic shortcuts so you can use the IDE efficiently, right now. Which is not to say that advanced users won’t find it useful – there are always more things to discover in an IDE like IntelliJ IDEA!
There are a few other useful plugins worth mentioning that help you learn languages in IntelliJ IDEA. There’s one for Python and one for Kotlin. For more advanced users we recommend taking a look at IntelliJ Code Golf. That one helps increase your accuracy in transforming one piece of code to another using a minimum of refactorings.
INSTALLING THE PLUGIN
Like all other plugins for IntelliJ IDEA, you may find it at JetBrains Plugin Repository. Search for the IDE Features Trainer plugin and install it. After a restart, IntelliJ IDEA’s Welcome screen will add a Learn… button. Click it to start IntelliJ IDEA with the learning tool window opened.
CAN I ADD MY OWN LESSONS?
Indeed, the plugin project is hosted on GitHub and pull requests are welcome! Modules and lessons are described as XML files. To add a custom lesson, create an XML file in a corresponding directory and add a description tag to the XML file of the module.
Each command in your XML file can be one of the following:
- Print some text in the Learn tool window,
- Show some code in the editor,
- Move the caret, or
- Show a task in the Learn tool window (and check user actions here).
All lessons should end with a <Win/> tag.
WHAT NEXT?
First, we would be happy to hear your feedback on this, to help us make IDE learning smoother and more useful. Please share your experience with the course, for example by clicking the ‘Send feedback’ button in the Modules view.
Second, we would like to extend our course with more lessons for learning advanced actions or even UI. Stay tuned for more news about this.
And finally, at some point we plan to make a convenient tool for creating new lessons and modules.
If you notice any kind of strange behavior or outright bugs, please report them to the bug tracker.
Thank you, and enjoy learning IntelliJ IDEA!
With this plugin installed IDEA doesn’t remember the mode of the left side and bottom bars (you can hide them by clicking on small grey square at the left-bottom corner). Each time I re-run IDEA these bars are displayed even if I closed them before.
This is definitely a bug. Thanks for catching that. We’ll fix it in a next build.
Whoever did this, I love you.
This is like vimtutor on steroids!
I invest time in learning shortcuts for my tools, Intellij included. However I never found anything about ⌃G until today.
I’m looking forward to new lessons.
Please implement a way to distinguish new lessons coming in updates from lessons already covered if you have the time and resources.
Thank you!
It’s so cool. I hope to get more courses.
very nice and best way to learn IntelliJ. Where were you before
It doesn’t work for me, clicking in Learning window on left on one of the links like “editor basics” or “completion” brings up a code snippet, but no instructions, the learn tool window doesn’t update at all and just shows links to the categories
Could you file an issue with your IDE version and plugin version to YouTrack? https://training.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/newissue Thank you in advance.
Webstorm 2017.2.4
MacOS Sierra 10.12.6
Clicking ‘Learn WebStorm’ does nothing
Going to https://training.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/newissue gives me a warning about an expired license “Thank you for choosing YouTrack! Your current subscription has ended…”
Hello Hans! Thank you for pointing us this issue, this plugin is still compatible only with IntelliJ IDEA. We are looking forward to implementing lessons for other IDEs. YouTrack project has been updated as well. Thank you again.
It best has a feature to start over the entire lessons progress.
The lessons are great, but the instructions/text in the learn panel does not wrap properly and there will often be words incomplete or missing. Adjusting the size of the panel does not adjust the text area within the panel. Is there a way to adjust the word wrapping or size of the panel containing the lessons. Using on Windows 10 with a 3840×2160 resolution display.
Thank you, Damian, for pointing us to this problem. It is an unknown issue, I’ve made a ticket to track this bug (https://training.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/TP-56).
This is a big roadblock that is preventing me from rolling this out to my students — as many have high-resolution displays.
Tim, thank you for feedback. This issue should be fixed in version 0.8.62. Please try it.
Hi!
I download plugin, but Java lessons not appear.
Can I download it(course) on local disk somewhere?
Artem, it is better to understand what went wrong. What are IDEA and plugin versions used?
Great work!
Is there an easy way to uncheck completed lessons in order to rerun the course?
Thank you, Magnus!
There is no easy way (like some button “uncheck lessons” ) to erase your results, unfortunately. But you could try to remove a
/config/options/ide-features-trainer.xmlfrom disk. Here is a hint how to find: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/206544519-Directories-used-by-the-IDE-to-store-settings-caches-plugins-and-logsHello,
unfortunately, I can not open the learn WebStrom plugin with the latest version 2018.2.3
I have installed the plugin and I can see the “learn Webstorm” link on the starting screen but nothing happen.
Hello Thomas. Unfortunately, IDE Features Trainer plugin is supported only by IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio, because of almost all the examples are given in Java.
hello Sergey,
Thanks for the fast answer.