IntelliJ IDEA 8: Bringing More Tools to a Productive Java Developer’s Workbench
Meet IntelliJ IDEA 8, the new version of an award-winning productivity-centric Java IDE that broadens the possibilities for developing rich, complex solutions with native support for every technology and language you need, all tied together in one robust, extensible IDE.
Traditionally offering first-rate support for developing Java, Java EE and Web applications with JSF, Hibernate, EJB, JPA, AJAX, wide range of application server integrations like Tomcat, Geronimo and Glassfish, and many other technologies and frameworks, natively integrated through all of its advanced, developer-assisting features, IntelliJ IDEA 8 progresses forward to keep pace with growing demands of developers.
IntelliJ IDEA 8 brings greater performance, debuggers for JavaScript and Flex, support for JBoss Seam, Struts 2, Spring 2.5, SQL-92 and MySQL, FreeMarker and Velocity, GWT 1.5, REST WebServices, brand-new integration with Microsoft Team Foundation Server, and greatly improved support for core Java development with new Java refactorings and assisting features.
Plus, improved dynamic language support for Groovy, Grails 1.0.3, better Ruby and new Scala, and numerous other new features and improvements, including a new code coverage engine, enhanced code editor, and improve version control integration for more convenient change management.
Multiple other improvements introduced in response to user demand include individual encoding configuration for files, file sets and projects, reworked project configuration, convenient thread dump analyzer, and many more.
Greater Performance and Flexibility
IntelliJ IDEA 8 is based on an all-new platform that provides better performance by accelerating file system operations via an intellectual caching engine. Plus, overall performance in multiprocessor and multicore systems is significantly higher than before.
IntelliJ IDEA 8 features a new, server-based approach to storing and managing user-specific data like keymaps, code style schemes, live templates, and so on. You can now work from multiple computers and your favorite settings and preferences will always stay in sync.
Debuggers for JavaScript and Flex
The best-of-breed IntelliJ IDEA debugger now completely supports JavaScript and Flex debugging, with watches and fully customizable conditional breakpoints, dependent breakpoints, expression evaluation, run-time expression evaluation and more.
JBoss Seam
IntelliJ IDEA 8 offers dedicated, out-of-the-box support for JBoss Seam, with comprehensive facilities for full-cycle development of Seam applications, including coding assistance with smart completion, syntax and annotation highlighting, wide range of Seam-aware code inspections, quick-fixes, visual editors for page flow and page navigation rules, plus the Seam components dependencies graph.
Struts 2
Version 8 offers complete Struts support, extended to Struts 2 via the full range of productivity-boosting features: a dedicated facet, with file set manager, library validator and automatic detection of configuration settings. Plus, the complete range of advanced coding assistance features: smart completion, syntax and error highlighting, refactoring, Struts-aware advanced project navigation and more.
Spring 2.5
IntelliJ IDEA 8 Spring integration includes support for Spring 2.5, with Spring WebFlow diagram, visual designer and coding assistance in both XML configuration files and Java annotations. Spring 2.5 stereotypes and autowiring are fully supported. Spring model code inspections, with automatic quick-fixes and extended range of coding assistance features are also available.
SQL
IntelliJ IDEA now fully supports SQL scripts with the complete range of its coding assistance features: smart completion for keywords, table and column names, syntax and error highlighting and more. Plus, Rename refactoring recognizes and updates table and column names. IntelliJ IDEA recognizes generic SQL (SQL-92), MySQL, and a number of other dialects. A dedicated SQL Console is provided to run and debug SQL scripts right from the IDE.
FreeMarker and Velocity
Full support for FreeMarker and Velocity through the complete range of productivity-boosting features is introduced: code completion, syntax and error highlighting, implicit variable declarations in comments, parameter info and quick documentation, and others. Moreover, complete support is provided for HTML and CSS code embedded in templates.
REST WebServices
IntelliJ IDEA supports version 0.8 of the JSR-311 specification of Representational State Transfer (REST) WebServices and its reference implementation, Jersey, and provides full range of supporting features, including a tool window for live debugging of the services, plus automatic generation of WADL descriptors from REST WebServices Java code and vice versa.
To get the full story on IntelliJ IDEA 8, visit http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/nextversion?ij8javacatalert
