There are a lot of good things to say about NetBeans 6.0. But if you are upgrading from earlier versions, be aware of these changes in keyboard shortcuts.
These are what I have noticed so far. Now I will have to change my keyboard shortcut habits. It is inconvenient, to say the least. Some of these changes will only cause confusion. Why would one think Tab, rather than the old Space, should be pressed for code completion? I have been using Space for code completion in all IDE, even including VIM. The only place I use Tab for completion is in tcsh or bash. Maybe this idea was borrowed from tcsh or bash? Thankfully, they didn't choose Esc.
Another source of confusion, Ctrl-Shift-F is pretty much the standard shortcut for code formatting. It works this way in NetBeans releases prior to 6.0, and Eclipse as well. Now NetBeans 6.0 slated Ctrl-Shift-F for a new feature called Find in Projects. To format code in NetBeans 6.0? one need to press Alt-Shift-F, which in NetBeans 5.x stands for Fix Imports.
Technorati Tags: NetBeans, IDE
| Tasks | NetBeans 5.x | NetBeans 6.0 |
| Expand code template on ... | Spac | Tab |
| Format code | Ctrl-Shift-F | Alt-Shift-F |
| Fix imports | Alt-Shift-F | Alt-Shift-I |
| Go to type | Alt-Shift-O | Ctrl-O |
| Toggle java comments | Ctrl-Shift-T | Alt-Shift-W in beta 2, Ctrl-Slash in RC 1 |
| Toggle bookmark | Ctrl-F2 | Supposed to be Ctrl-Shift-M, but not working. No such shortcut in the menu, either |
| Go to next bookmark | F2 | Ctrl-Shift-Period |
| Go to previous bookmark | Shift-F2 | Ctrl-Shift-Comma |
These are what I have noticed so far. Now I will have to change my keyboard shortcut habits. It is inconvenient, to say the least. Some of these changes will only cause confusion. Why would one think Tab, rather than the old Space, should be pressed for code completion? I have been using Space for code completion in all IDE, even including VIM. The only place I use Tab for completion is in tcsh or bash. Maybe this idea was borrowed from tcsh or bash? Thankfully, they didn't choose Esc.
Another source of confusion, Ctrl-Shift-F is pretty much the standard shortcut for code formatting. It works this way in NetBeans releases prior to 6.0, and Eclipse as well. Now NetBeans 6.0 slated Ctrl-Shift-F for a new feature called Find in Projects. To format code in NetBeans 6.0? one need to press Alt-Shift-F, which in NetBeans 5.x stands for Fix Imports.
Technorati Tags: NetBeans, IDE