Top Reasons to Upgrade to IntelliJ IDEA 7.0
IntelliJ IDEA is an intelligent Java IDE intensely focused on developer productivity. Our code editor is consistently called the best in the industry, and we support all the major languages and technologies with your productivity and teamwork in mind. Upgrade now »
Enjoy improved performance
IntelliJ IDEA 7.0 now provides an entirely new level of performance. Starting up is plain faster (we mean it, you'll notice). Actions such finding usages, search and replace, analyzing code, updating from version control etc will not slow you down any longer as they now work in background. IntelliJ IDEA now fully leverages multi-core processor capabilities to bring you significant improvements in performance. Namely, editor highlights errors and warnings and offers fix suggestions utilizing all of processing power of your machine. Thus, it feels naturally faster. Completely reworked Local History and File System Synchronization ensure that IntelliJ IDEA 7.0 is always responsive. You will notice this as soon as you try the new version, even on slower machines.
Organize your project better
Project organization has been redesigned from the ground up. We've added a new element to project structure, the so-called Facet which helps you recognize, logically separate and turn on support for a specific framework or tool. The new project paradigm clearly streamlines the organization of complex, multi-component enterprise projects.
Create Web applications using Spring & Hibernate — with pleasure
Code insight has always been a forte of IntelliJ IDEA, earning it the title of "the intelligent Java IDE." This insight has been extended to Spring and Hibernate, which are now the de facto standard for web development. The whole arsenal of tools you are used to when working with Java or XML code — smart completion, syntax and error highlighting, on-the-fly code inspections, intention actions and refactorings, and many others — is now available for developing Spring- and Hibernate-based applications.
Upgrade your pleasure while working with these frameworks with the following features: ready made live templates for typical cases; visual tools for viewing dependencies and editing Spring beans and configuration file sets; recognition of Hibernate properties in Spring code; Hibernate Query Language console with assisted query editing and debugging; diagram tool for viewing and editing Hibernate metadata, relationships, mappings and properties, Spring beans and their relationships; and more cool features.
Use more languages in your development
IntelliJ IDEA now supports even more languages. You can mix and match your Java code with Groovy or Ruby/JRuby code.
Support for these dynamic languages includes the entire scope of intelligent code-awareness features you know and love. With this insight, extended to support Rails and Grails, beefed up with RHTML and GSP, IntelliJ IDEA brings you the widest range of coding assistance features, support for running and debugging scripts, and more, all tied together to let you create Ruby and Groovy applications, even with support for Rails and Grails, in almost no time, with highest quality.
Develop Web services easily
Developer productivity greatly depends on how versatile the IDE he's using is. IntelliJ IDEA takes care of routine tasks and lets the developer focus on the creative side of coding. Web service oriented developers, rejoice — its powerful functionality is now ready to serve you, too! With IntelliJ IDEA, both web services and web service clients can be created virtually in few clicks. Professional-grade features include: wide range of engines supported (Apache Axis, JAXWS, Glassfish, and more), automatic Java code generation from WSDL/WADL and XMLBeans and vise versa, creating XML documents from XSD schemas and vise versa, numerous ready-made scenarios available via a set of live templates, and full range of code-aware and code assisting features. With all this, your work is going to get easier, faster, and a lot more enjoyable!
Debug faster
IntelliJ IDEA 7.0's enhanced debugger at last allows you to shift the classical 20/80 ratio of development/debugging stages, i.e. develop more and debug less. No need to memorize hashcodes of your objects to distinguish them — mark instances with different names and colors to tell them apart from each other at a glance in the Variables View. Save your time and keep focus with Automatic Variables feature, which monitors variables in the current context and automatically adds them to Variables View.
Debug complex expressions at ease with Selective Step Into, which lets you select what part of a complex call you want to debug. And even more, the debugger helps you to find and analyze the infinite recursions in your code, with iteration counts and highlighting in the Stack view. You can even now see Console, Variables, Frames and Watch views simultaneously, thanks to the completely redesigned debugger UI. Amazing time-saving novelties, isn't it?!
Add flexibility to your work with Version Control
IntelliJ IDEA 7.0 gives you more freedom in experimenting with code changes. This is made possible with the concept of shelving — putting aside code changes that you for some reason would like to implement later. Shelved changes can be stored as an individual Patch, which you can save as a file to share or apply to the code later.
In addition, IntelliJ IDEA 7.0 introduces such a category as Incoming Changes. When working with a file, you can view the changes committed to the repository by the team, you haven't yet updated to locally.
When working in Offline Mode (so far available for Perforce), you can stop worrying whether your VCS is accessible. All outgoing operations made offline are cached and later resolved when you go online — automatically and transparently to the user.
And now some good news for Rational Clear Case users! The unified Version Control systems support, with innovative change management features described above, has been extended with support for Rational ClearCase. Our numbers have grown!
Work with even more ease and efficiency
Our IDE has always made the work of developers easier and more efficient. If a developer is a surgeon, then IntelliJ IDEA is its small army of assistants, handing in the right tool at the right time. So, in line with this analogy, the new release has drafted a new generation of assistants to further speed up your work. Here are just a few of the most useful ones:
- Go to Action. Don't want to dig through the menus looking for that action you need? IntelliJ IDEA will find it for you. Just press Ctrl +Shift+A, start typing a name, and the list of available actions matching your input will pop up immediately.
- Meet our new arsenal of code inspections. Go to Inspection Profile and click to see the preset "New in 7." Make sure to scroll down for the full list :).
- When using quick-fixes, save your time with Fix All Problems — correct a bunch of similar problems with just one click.
- Navigate around your code even faster! Show Usages (shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+F7) lets you instantly see the list of all places in your project that call the method you are in.
With each new release, IntelliJ IDEA delivers many new refactorings and improves the existing ones. Version 7.0 is no exception. We've added: Introduce Parameter, Move Class to Inner, Convert Class to Anonymous, Inline Parameter, and more.
We are confident that you will love the multitude of new and improved features that our team put into your favorite IDE. There are so many of them that there's just not enough room to mention here.
Fall in love with IntelliJ IDEA, because the love is mutual. There's a reason they say: "IntelliJ IDEA is developed with the developer in mind." :-)
To help you make up your mind, see the full details on new features and enhancements here » and
new Live Demos here ».