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General IDEA features


  • (tick) Classic options view usability improvements
  • (tick) Searchable option dialogs (MacOS X Tiger like)
  • (tick) Project-wide error highlighting (to be displayed in project view)
  • (tick) NavBar
  • (tick) Scope view
  • (tick) Simplified project/module settings UI
  • Floating editor tab groups


  • (tick) Code coverage integration
  • (tick) Custom inspections and intentions based on structural search and replace templates
  • (tick) Extract method refactoring enhancements. Will work in some cases, where it currectly refuses to.
  • (tick) @NotNull annotation runtime assertions
  • (tick) Inplace rename refactoring for local variables


  • (tick) Version control integration usability enhancements: tree-like or list-like changes instantly available in the toolwindow.
  • Background update from the VCS


  • Code completion API
  • (tick) Injected languages API: XML tag contents and attributes, java string literals
  • (tick) Global inspection API


  • (tick) JUnit4 support
  • (tick) Eclipse compiler support
  • Incremental test run. Re-run only tests that execute changed code


  • Module system should support notion of interface and implementation
  • Separate dependencies for module interface, implementation and test parts


  • (tick) Instant messaging including code pointers, stacktraces exchange with group chat support
  • (tick) Contact list, registered project committers
  • (tick) Single file only. P2P sources sync: diff with remote peer project state, ability to take changes from and to.
  • Collaborative code review: auto-follow-me navigation
  • Warn if start editing file modified by someone else in terms of VCS
  • Warn if simultaneous editing causes merge after commit.

UI Designer

  • (tick) Major usability improvements for editing forms
  • (tick) Support for multiple layout managers (GridBagLayout, JGoodies Forms, CardLayout, BorderLayout etc.)
  • (tick) Support for custom component creation code
  • Possibility to generate code without forms_rt.jar
  • (tick) Support for many more Swing components and property types (colors, fonts, icons, list models, setLabelFor, client properties, etc)
  • HIG-compliant borders, spacing and indents, baseline alignment
  • (tick) Support for nested forms
  • (tick) Possibility to create and navigate to event handlers from the form designer
  • (tick) UI inspections (automatic checking for UI guidelines compliance)
  • (tick) Possibility to capture UI forms from running Java application

Team Support

Build and Continuous Integration Server

  • (tick) Integration/Nightly/Release build automation
  • (tick) Build triggering: VCS, manual, schedule
  • (tick) Build grid / cluster support
  • Easy build setup from .ipr file
  • (tick) Existing builds coded in Ant or Maven will be supported
  • (tick) Instant notification
    • Navigate to failed tests in IDE
    • Review failure stacktrace in IDE
    • Re-run failed tests locally
  • (tick) History, statistics
  • (tick) Run build using local sources snapshot without committing to the VCS
  • (tick) Delayed commit: build and commit if successfull
  • Update to the sources of the latest successfull build
  • Mark tests as ignored.

Server-side code analysis

  • Code inspection
  • Code duplicates
  • Code coverage
  • Results to be published on the Web and displayed directly in IDEA editor where applicable and necessary.

Project portal

  • Share project-wide configurations (run configurations, code style, inspection profiles etc.)
  • (tick) Continuous integration status
  • Project commiters info (online/offline, contact info, currently working on etc.)
  • Project billboard
  • Server-side code analysis results.

J2EE Features

JSF Support

  • JSF Configuration Authoring Support (jsf-config editing aids, form-based config editing, navigation diagram editor)
  • Visual JSF/JSP/HTML Designer
  • JSF-Oriented CodeInsight Features

EJB Support

  • EJB 3.0 Support
  • EJB 2.1 -> EJB 3.0 Migration Assistance
  • Persistence Unit Diagram Modeler
  • EJB-oriented CodeInsight Features
  • More Complete Error Checking

J2EE Services Support

  • WebLogic 9.0
  • WebSphere

Other Features

  • Better support for JSP fragments included into other pages
  • Miscellaneous Javascript, Html, JSP, CSS improvements.
  • No labels


  1. Anonymous

    Is the Build and Continuous Integration Server just an integration of CruiseControl, something completely new or something in between?

  2. I think that that will be a good idea to include direct support for XP-stype pair programming in Collaboration features, to give a possibility for two developers simultaneously edit the source and discuss changes in realtime using some sort of built-in chat.

    1. Anonymous

      If you're sitting right next to your peer programmer, why would you use built-in chat instead of just telling him what you want? Or do you mean that programmers are sitting apart but like in XP-style working on the same document? That would be further from xp-style programming. I guess I just don't understand the idea.

      1. Anonymous

        I'm guessing that Alexander is referring to an environment where contributors are geographically separated (like many open source projects). While those projects may never be as efficient as in-person programming pairs, those projects still stand to benefit from the same pair programming specific collaboration features that in-person pairs would benefit from.

        Our shop uses XP-style pair programming. Each of our pair workstations has 4 monitors (two for each developer), two mice, and two keyboards. While this is optimal from an ergonomics perspective (which we hold paramount), some pretty simple communications break down. For example, one developer can't simply point to their screen at a line of code and have the other developer easily see it. Having a code pointer or a distinct mouse pointer for each developer (rather than sharing one) could be a great addition.

        Pairs of developers often travel together, only having access to their laptops, which currently can't be used effectively for pair programming. Being able to use two separate machines (especially laptops) to do pair programming would be a huge feature for us. Suddenly we could work just as effectively on the road or at a coffee shop as we can in the office.

        More and more shops like ours are adopting pair programming and there are few if any products designed for the unique environment that pair programming takes place in. With innovative features directly supporting pair programming, not only would our development efficiency increase but we would also save money on hardware and that always makes for a better sell - we'd certainly pay for it.

        As for chat features, I personally prefer in person or voice chat discussions (and I don't see any problem with using a 3rd party voice chat client). A simple way to look at it is that you can speak with your voice and type code at the same time. Still, I really like the idea being able to send code pointers to anyone in the team.

  3. If support for web frameworks like JSF is being added why not also add support for hibernate, the most used persistence framework. At least an integration with hibernate tools would be great. This way IDEA would cover the development of one more layer of a "usual" J2EE project.

    1. Anonymous

      "JSF + Hibernate" is definitely the choice of our corporation.

      1. Anonymous

        Have you ever looked at EJB3, it definitely is Hibernate but with a somewhat cleaned up API and everything moved into annotations.
        Hibernate is also the base for the EJB3 entitiy beans implementation in JBoss because the APIs are so close to each other.

        I will move towards EJB3 as soon as possible due to the similarities and that the api basically is tested and proven and now standard.
        So I do not see a real need for direct Hibernate support.

        1. Anonymous

          I completely agree with you.

    2. Anonymous

    3. Anonymous

  4. Anonymous

    It would very helpful to have file template that are project specific.

    1. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous


      i  really can not understand why this (since years requested) featureis still missing. Nearly every developer has different projects to handle. So why isn't it possible to use different templates for different projects? It's not a big dieal to implement such a thing, so pleeease dear jetbrains-teamm idea6 would be a nice place to add it ....

  5. IMHO Tapestry (especially 4) is head and shoulders above the others in its class, but it lacks a good IDE support. Could you fill this gap? (smile)

    1. Anonymous

      Support for tapestry


      This plugin adds Tapestry 4.0 support for the IntelliJ IDEA IDE.

    2. Anonymous

      +1. Spindle would be the main reason for me to use Eclipse instead of Idea - Sonny

  6. Anonymous

    One feature suggestion for IDEA 6.0:
    Look at JBuilder's (and Delphi) SyncEdit feature. It is simpler but more powerful and productive then IDEA's Live Templates.
    Just select a code fragment, press a key combination to enter SyncEdit mode, and viola, you have a Live Template from the selection. Whenever user changes a word when in SyncEdit mode, all occurancies of that word in the selection scope change automatically. Simple as that, but extremely usefull.

  7. Anonymous

    Also, option to enable automatic highlighting (instead of invoking it with a key stroke) of variable/method/class usage would be useful. Maybe the default should be off, to avoid negative feedback as it happened to Eclipse.

  8. Anonymous

    JavaScript code-completion is rather incomplete. Us web-UI developers would like to see full DOM suggestions on JS objects, including vendor extensions. The current CSS and XHTML editing is fantastic!

    1. Anonymous

      I agree. I liked CSS, XHTML and JavaScript features. But being able to use the whole DOM objects in JavaScript would be great.

  9. Anonymous

    UML support with refactoring and live sync would be the feature that will make the IDEA a complete tool for the model, code and test.

    1. Anonymous

      I totally agree simple uml plugin is not enough we need somthing more powerfull and IDEA must provide a way to syn the model whith the code.

      1. Anonymous

        -1 Don't add UML suport it sucks, it will bloat everything

  10. Anonymous

    I would love to see a domain-specific-language editor (tab completion, indentation, hints, etc.) for SQL... Even better if it works for SQL embedded in strings in source code or in resource files.

  11. Anonymous

    Wow... that list sounds quite ambitious (and interesting) - here's hoping you can pull it off.

    That said, as others have mentioned, it would be good to see support for Hibernate (maybe Spring as well? (smile)), but even more importantly, I think that a comprehensive effort to complete, document and provide examples for the plugin API would be a huge win. I know that's not nearly as glamorous as the collaboration stuff, but I don't think it's any less important, especially in terms of increasing the flexibilty of the IDE and making it easy for people to take advantage of that flexibility.

    1. I'd love to get some Spring support!

      1. Anonymous

        me as well!

        1. Anonymous

      2. Anonymous

      3. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous

      +2! I have two jobs (smile)

  12. Anonymous

    I would like to see AspectJ support.

    1. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous

    3. Anonymous

    4. Anonymous

    5. Anonymous

      1. Anonymous

      2. Anonymous

        +1 * 15 people one my team.

    6. Anonymous

      A must with Spring 3.

      AspectJ 5 "annotation mode" is quite ugly.

      Pleeeaaaase native support ......

    7. Anonymous

    8. Anonymous

      Absolutely. Aspects are a must.

      We are going through contortions trying to keep our code usable under Intellij while adding aspects through our Ant build. The half of the development team that uses Eclipse mocks us regularly, since they can use Aspects without concern. Admittedly, it is a slow cycle for them when they have to turn aspects on (since AspectJ can't do incremental compiling well) so they benefit when we eliminate the need. But at least they have the option.

      1. Anonymous

    9. Anonymous

      1. Anonymous

    10. Anonymous

    11. Anonymous

    12. Anonymous

  13. Anonymous

    We use spring as the framework, buid web pages using JSF, use Hibernate(plus Xdoclet) to talk to databases. Recently I've tried other IDEs that support those three, which makes a great help. As a server-side developer, JSF helps develope the clide-side and Hibernate solves the nightmare of databases communication. With JSF, Hibernate, Xdoclet, I can really be a developer who "code with pleasure". IDEA is great because of its high performance and low memory usage. It is pure, fast, and looking really good! Upon the great base that IDEA owns, it should be more powerful once other convenient and standard technologies are embedded in it.

  14. Anonymous

    I should say that I have no use for the features described in Team Support... sorry.

    On the other hand I would like massive improvement in Javascript support.

    Integration with the DB to write SQL (auto completion like TOAD) would be relly cool (no need to execute the SQL, really, just help to remeber the name of the table fields).

    Last thing would be increased efficency in the editor (aka more speed). For example: If I write a comment in a file why do inspections checks the whole file again? If I just push the Enter key why do inspections checks the whole file again?

    These seems like little thinks but when the class is large (5000 lines and cannot be broken down) or when you have many inspection enabled, IDEA is really slow.

    1. Anonymous

  15. Anonymous

    need to Support J2EE1.4+ WebServices

    1. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous

  16. Anonymous

    how about a profiler?

    1. Anonymous

  17. Anonymous

    1. Usable OpenAPI
    2. Hibernate
    3. SQL code completion

    1. Anonymous

      +1 (especially hibernate and SQL)

  18. Anonymous

    java web start support.. that is, generate .jnlp files, it's hell to add/remove tons of different resources

    1. Anonymous

      I don't kwon what you think but today java web start is a rapidly growing technology it would be great to have some support in generating JNLPs and help in DEBUGGING jws applications.


  19. Anonymous

    I'd love to see support for JMock tests in the Rename Method refactoring.

  20. Anonymous

    1. searchable keymaps (actions or keystrokes)

    2. refactoring to extract tag file from JSP, which can find and replace duplicate code

    3. Sync between Ant build.xml and .ipr. (not sure how. start with build.xml template?)

    4. I like CruiseControl, but some of your build server features sound killer.

    1. Anonymous

      > 1. searchable keymaps (actions or keystrokes)

  21. I would love to see JBoss support

    1. JBoss is already supported in IDEA better than it is in any other IDE in my opinion. Just download the JBoss Integration plugin written by Martin Fuhrer from the plugins centre. No need for JetBrains to build anything when a plugin as good as this is already available.

      1. Anonymous

        I will agree that it is pretty decent but it does not support debugging a servlet live while deployed on a jboss server.  This is an AWESOME feature.  I can stop and step through exactly what goes into and out of a servlet request.   I don't believe it will do this.

      2. Anonymous

        Hey your retarted friend Martin Fuhrer just made his jboss plugin require a license key! This is why IDEA needs to build in Jboss support.

        1. Anonymous

          I work with this plugin (version 2.10) and not require license key

          1. Anonymous

            Yeah that's because your not using Demetra, your probably still using IDEA 5.01 -- Anyone who is using a current build (such as #5181) will know real quickly that the jboss plugin 2.x won't work in the Demetra code base. Look, if you going to be commenting on this page please run a Demetra Build so you'll know what everyone is talking about!  FYI the current jboss plugin for demetra is 3.-eap02 and that DOES require a license key.

            1. Anonymous

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            2. Anonymous

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            3. Anonymous

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            4. Anonymous

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            5. Anonymous

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            6. Anonymous

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            7. Anonymous

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        2. Anonymous

          Anonymous, it's quite rude of you to call names to people who actually contribute with their efforts and deliver a product successfully used by many people in their daily jobs. Please realize that creating a good plugin takes a lot of effort, so it makes sense at some point to go commercial, unless you prefer it to stagnate like simpleUML.

          I'm sure that most sensible people would gladly pay a few dolars for a tool which saves them a lot of time and nerves every day. The rest are already using Eclipse (or waiting for the latest crack).


          TO MODERATOR: please edit or delete the offensive post above.

            1. Anonymous

              Still his point is well taken, this was one of the reasons intellij was appealing to our company, now to have to pay extra for an important feature like JBoss integration is wrong! Intellij really has to make plans to include JBoss support. I do not want to be held hostage be the whims of a plug-in developer!

              1. Anonymous


                There is no reason to "edit or delete the offensive post above".  It makes a good point.  Taking advantage of those who upgrade IntelliJ to make a couple dollars -- more than any of us spent on JBoss itself) -- is retarded.  Unfortunately for the author, he has now even taken away the 30 day trial and most prospective users will just skip right over it.  Not only that, but "contacting Fuhrer Engineering to obtain a license key" is near impossible... the website is a complete mess.  Good luck to Martin Fuhrer (thumbs down)

        3. I really don't think there is any need for name-calling here and it only makes you look bad. If you look at the date of my post you will know full-well that when I made it the JBoss Integration plugin was non-commercial and free to use. With it becoming an "at cost option" I do believe JetBrains need to re-evaluate the situation and maybe consider adding support within the product itself, however at the time of my post this was absolutly unneccessary since there were no signs on the horizon that Martin would make his plugin commercial (it had been free for an extremely long period of time).

          1. Would love to see edit ability on this discussion! (smile)

            Just wanted to add that I actually don't have any issue with Martin getting paid for his work, the plugin is of high enough quality to be commercial so I do wish him luck, however with this change JetBrains will need to re-evaluate the situation to see what it means to their customer-base. To be honest if Martin is adding on-the-fly debugging to the plugins capabilities (I've not see the features of the new version yet) and JetBrains aren't planning to implement JBoss support themselves then do I think quite a few people would pay for it. Although it is risky to release a commercial plugin to support an Open Source application server it is certainly not unheard of.

  22. Anonymous

    Please use the SWT and, if it is possible, implement it in the gui designer.
    Actually the interface is really slow!

    1. Anonymous

      +1 for SWT

  23. I would love to see support for AOP in Demetra. I don't have much use for collaboration tools but have pressing needs to use AOP.

    Despite Eclipse having AOP support I still think IDEA is much much better all round, except for AOP!

    So please give us AOP in Demetra!

  24. I would like to see an improvement to the output windows.

    Try setting the scrollbar to the bottom for an output window such as the console output while a program is running and producing output. (i.e. so that the very bottom of the viewport is showing). Now wait for the next line of output to come. The scrollbar moves up slightly. As more text arrives, the newest lines go out of view instead of the oldest. This is not ideal.

    I faced this exact problem on a project recetntly and IMHO it was not the easiest thing to solve, especially when new lines are being inserted in bulk and rapidly. I did however solve the problem completely (this for an applet now in use in the Formula One control rooms(smile)) If the talented people at JetBrains wanted to see my solution I would be honored (after getting permission from F1)

    1. Anonymous

      There is actually a way to do this (at least in Intellij 4.5). Place the cursor somewhere in the window then do Ctrl+End. That'll move the cursor to the very end of the output and keep it pegged there, even as more text comes in. (I tried it because Textpad has the same feature).

  25. Anonymous

    What I would love to se in IDEA is a profiler that is as well integrated as the debugger is today. It wouldn't need to be as feature rich as the standalone commercial ones, but a performance hierarchy displaying cpu info and some functionality to identify memory and performance hogs would be really useful.

    1. Anonymous

    2. There is a JProfiler Plugin, and it works very good and is very seamless integrated in IDEA. Next to the Run and Debug Buttons in the Toolbar you get a Profile Button. So everything which is runable (Applications, ApplicationServer, Unit-Tests etc.) could be profiled...

      Nomike aka Michael Postmann

    3. Anonymous

      YourKit is quite nice

  26. Anonymous

    I don't know it maybe possible already, but I'd love to be able to override project settings on opening someone other's project

    • thing that bugs me the most: placement of tabs (project, structure, ant build, etc.) When I create new projects it's fine, but when I open a project created by someone else it resets to that someone's schema...
    • JDK settings (I work on Mac, the names of JDK IDEA comes up on mac a different then those on Windows, for example the update number 1.4.2_X and 1.4.2_Y) So when I open someone's else project every time I have to go and change it...
    1. Anonymous

      FYI, the tab placement settings and most other UI settings are stored in your .iws file, not your .ipr file. If you just don't check your .iws file into version control (we use Subversion, so 'svn propedit svn:ignore' on the directory containing the .ipr file), then you can check out a project without checking out its .iws file, and can use your own without having to deal with some else's layout.

      The JDK settings thing is annoying. I hit that a lot too. Say, somebody else checked in the project with JDK 1.4.2_03 and I am running 1.4.2_05, the first thing I do after updating is to change the JDK number to my local JDK. Then when I check in, they have to do the same. It's hard to standardize companywide on a specific "patch" revision number to the JDK, since they change so frequently.

  27. Anonymous

    I saw Websphere and Weblogic (commercial) support. It should be nice to have support for JBoss AS (open source).

    1. JBoss integration is supported by plugin available in Plugin Manager

  28. Anonymous

    In the J2EE editor, it should be very usefull to add the possibility to add/edit/remove ejbFinders and ejbSelects visually. Currently (Idea 5) one can manage ejb/relationships... from editor of the ejb Module, but if I wanna add to ejbselect or ejbfinder, I need to edit the ejb-jar.xml manually.

  29. Anonymous

    A feature that would make this a "must buy" is if the visual JSP designer supports custom JSP tags, that you could define the visual representation of.

    1. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous

      +5 (the whole team wants this)

    3. Anonymous

      +100..  eagerly waiting for this.

  30. Anonymous

    please support custom compilers:
    we need to be able to plug-in support for APT or AOP compilers.
    currently we cannot replace built-in compiler (javac or jikes)

    being able to hook before and after compilation process is not always enough (sad)

    note this does not necesarilly mean we want you to implement APT or AspectJ support... providing sound API to do this by ourselves would be enough for start...

  31. Anonymous

    Good ClearCase support, supported by the vendor, is really needed. Relying on custom plugin, not really supported, is not sufficient for large scale shops

    1. Anonymous

      I could not have said it better myself.  In order for my employer to make IntelliJ the prefered IDE this as well as WebSphere support is a must!

    2. Anonymous


    3. Anonymous

      totally agree - the plugin works for simple stuff but it's crap - it has its problems with refactoring!

  32. Anonymous

    Spring and Hibernate support would be extremely welcomed.

    1. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous

    3. Anonymous

  33. Anonymous

    Top missing features: Hibernate, Web Services, Struts-complete like another vendor.., JSF --> Spring would be nice too!  If all of these features were included and up to date then I'd have no problem pay you my $300 every 2 years!  As well, in 4.5 the effort to make WebLogic run is too much - it should run as an embedded server like Tomcat in Eclipse so  the Code replacement and other language platform features are all useable.

  34. Anonymous

    We really need a good plugin tutorial.

    • DocJava
  35. Anonymous

    we like idea,because it is smart.
    but we need a faster debugger,i feel slow when debug and i feel idea5/4.5 is slower than 3.
    we hope less memory needed,idea used 300M or more when i wrok. idea5/4.5 used more memory than 3.
    but the most important thing is faster,or i will with no pleasure and feel impatient.

  36. Anonymous

    performance is very important.some ides have good feature,but we can't bear their low  performance.
       idea's performance is good,but thing looks go to the bad

  37. Anonymous

    Any chance for Portlet API in the nearest future?  With support for JBoss Portal would be awesome!!
    Or, just JBoss Portal deployment plugin if possible (JBoss 4 app server is already supported via a great plugin)

  38. Anonymous


    • To be able to set environment variables when running an app, unit test or ant build.
    • To be able to have all windows split up/docked together arbitrarily. Similar to Xcode on OS X. I know you can float windows, but they always come to front when clicking in main window. OSX users can make use of exposé; Windows/Linux users can buy Macs.
    • Two-stage structural search and replace, eg, search for something stucturally, then search and replace structurally within that initially found block. (useful eg, in replacing guarded blocks of code for log4j and replacing them with guarded jakarta commons logging code).
    • Anything to stop Eclipse users whining (smile)
    1. Anonymous

      +1 for env variables. We have a lot of ant files with $

      Unknown macro: {env.ABC}


  39. Anonymous

    Coming over from Netbeans 4.1...

      * I would like to see the build process in intellij to incorporate something like -pre-compile, -post-compile, operations.  I have as to now had to export the project to a build file and then modify it, to make it work (doing btye code injection - JPOX).

    However, the overall Intellij experience is better than netbeans.

  40. Anonymous

    I'd most like to see some spring/hibernate support and Maven 2 support similar to the current support for ant.

  41. Gosh, I can't imagine anything else that's needed in IDEA.  Hit the beach instead!  Build an open source voting system, or solve world hunger.

    But if you insist on features... a plugin module that extends compete syntax checking to jakarta velocity macros. (.vm). And better control over HTML standards compliance, perhaps by bundling a module such as "HTML tidy" for Firefox.  Right now IDEA checks fragments of HTML pretty well... but it can miss the bigger picture of how the HTML performs as a complete unit.

    Note: Nothing on the team's list above is of any interest to me.

    1. For example knowing that <option #if( $value.equals($req.getParameter($name)) ) selected #end>$value</option> is not really an error.

      1. Anonymous

  42. I would vote for adding SWT support in the GUI Designer. 

  43. Anonymous

    Judging from the comments, I must be the only one here that wants 5.0 stability first.  Maybe the Linux and Mac support is lacking but both platforms seem pretty shaky.

    1. ++ stability first!  (though, I use Linux, and have seen no issue.  But if there is one, stability FIRST)

    2. IDEA has always been rock solid but 5.0 is full of bugs.

      I like all of the General Features. None of the team features would be interesting to me as we already have all the functionality using open source solutions and are unlikely to adopt a proprietary replacement.

      IDEA was the first IDE that seemed to be aimed at making professional developers more productive. Some of the more recent features (like the GUI builders and J2EE wizards and code standards) seem to be aimed at more at CIOs than at developers. I think developers are paying the price in increased complexity and reduced stability.

      Please fix the bugs.

    3. Anonymous

      Yes! Please remove those final quirks from the current version first:
      Most notably:
      -Better Javadoc window in code completion: There should be a way to see the javadocs for overloaded methods - <ctrl>-p is far too less information - see Netbeans Javadoc window for overloaded methods/constructors. Also, if I want to change from one overloaded method to another there is no way to see the Javadocs of the other overloading methods without first deleting or modifying the whole statement!
      - Add the name of the class that is used to generate the completion list from to the completion window at the top (again see Netbeans)
      - allow for using package names in goto class dialog (<ctrl>-n).
      - improve CVS *speed* (diff is so horribly slow even on local filesystem cvs: "reading data from server: 1kb, 2kb, 3kb...") and usability (especially display branches, sticky tags etc) - see "versioning view" in Netbeans 3.x and 4.x (not 5.x)
      -improve the debugging view: make a treetable out of the table to unclutter name, value and type information (again see netbeans)
      -add fixed watches to the debug (a watch that is bound to an exact instance, not to the current scope)
      -debug the cvs merge view - after a merge it sometimes reverts the changes, sometimes automatically applies them...

      thanks - sebastian

      1. Anonymous


        Well said.

  44. Anonymous

    when will AspectJ be integrated in?

  45. Anonymous

    WebSphere support should be for both 5.1 and 6.0 - this is most important feature for my organization.  WebSphere support should focus on debugging, especially jsp debugging needs to work great.  Other parts of the websphere integration are useful but not critical.

  46. Anonymous

    +1 for a smart SQL editor. That would be a fantastic feature since so many sql editors, even really expensive ones, suck.

  47. Anonymous

    Faster edit and continue. Having to wait many seconds for few classes to be reloaded is the only thing that annoys me in 5.0.
    Dont overgrow your product. You are close to perfect today.

  48. Anonymous

    For my team and likely other teams in my company your whole 'Team Support' section with each outlined subsection would be extremely useful. The only thing I'd warn about is for Continous Build System to have generic api that would allow us to write a plugin to use our home grown CBS. Of course good integration with Cruise Control is a must. We actually use both.

  49. Anonymous

    There are three things I want from new version of IDEA: performance, performance, performance.  I accept that a product as full featured as IDEA is going to require a lot of memory, but it seems lately that with my big project it just takes a lot longer to do simple tasks and many times the CPU maxes out and I can't continue working until manually killing IDEA and restarting.  It almost has me wanting to go back to using something simple like a text editor and Ant, but it would kill me to lose all of the features I've come to love in IDEA.

  50. Anonymous

    The feature that I miss the most is good searching capabilities on log files. This includes:

    Backward incremental search (like Alt-F3, but backwards), as the recent events are at the end of the file.

    Search in the current file and place results in a buffer (like the output of Find in Path).

    Search in several files whose names are given either as a list, or with wildcards/regular expression (all the rest like Find in Path)

  51. Anonymous

    I would like GUI Designer to enable custom creation of a components, derived from Component Palette's components. For example, I'd like GUI Designer to generate the code  
     JTextField textField = createTextField ();

  52. Anonymous

     JTextField textField = createTextField ();

  53. Anonymous

    Suggestion: build in support for Subversion

    1. Anonymous

      just give intelliJ 5.0 a try (wink)

  54. I would like the ability do define a JDK that is relative to project root.
    This is because we work with version control and JDK is saved in version control too.
    When we switch project (in different ClearCase view) i want it to take the JDK from this view, without the need to define a JDK for each view

  55. Anonymous

    Eclipse Mylar ( seems to represent a very innovative concept. Please consider the same functionality for intelliJ 6.0

    1. Anonymous

      Unless there's a lot more to Mylar than meets the eye, it's called "favorites" in IntelliJ...

      1. Anonymous

        If something like Mylar's task focused UI ends up on the table for 6.0 consider reusing the core Mylar facilities, which are not coupled to Eclipse (send mail to for details).

        Mik Kersten
        Mylar Project Lead,
        AspectJ Committer,

  56. Anonymous

    Guys, Tapestry 4 IDE support would be a greate job

  57. One area where IDEA's current build system doesn't work for me is where I have to post-process bytecode.  My particular example is first of all running JDK 5.0 source code through RetroWeaver and then through my JDO enhancement tool.  It may be that documenting the plugin API better is all that is needed (Retroweaver appears to be able to post-process stuff, but I don't know how to hook MVCsoft JDO tools in there).  In any case, it's currently one of my biggest obstacles to using IDEA in my build workflow.

  58. Geronimo support would be great.

  59. Anonymous

    Better javascript support by using (even incomplete) type inferencing would be great!

  60. Anonymous

    AspectJ, AspectJ, AspectJ !!!!

    1. Anonymous

      Yes, yes, yes !!! (smile)


      1. Anonymous

        Note that AspectJ provides a framework for integrating with other IDEs (supports Eclipse, and used to to a reasonable job of support NetBeans, JBuilder, and JDeveloper before those fell behind Eclipse integration).  Because implementing an AOP compiler (or extending an existing Java compiler to support AspectJ) is a huge amount of work, if you start planning this support I suggest coordinating with the AspectJ team via the mailing list.

        Mik Kersten
        Mylar Project Lead,
        AspectJ Committer,

  61. Anonymous

    I agree.  Idea is a dog.
    Performance improvements would be welcome.
    Stability improvements would be welcome.

    Nothing on the above list of features is of any interest to me.
    Instant messaging?  What a lark!  You guys have nothing better to do than reinvent that wheel?  What a waste.

  62. Anonymous

    The two most important to me would be a JSF visual dev UI, and Merant/Serena PVCS integration.....


    Better yet would be to provide an Idea Plugin API -to- Eclips Plugin adapter.  Can you imagine being able to use
    all of the Eclipse plugins in Idea as if they were native!?  If it were, I wouldn't need either of the features above,
    because there are Eclipse plugins already available for each of these features!!

    "Fire at will"
    -- The Klingon twin sister, Lursa, from "Star Trek VII: Generations"

    1. Anonymous

      Visual dev of JSF is already on the roadmap. I'm pretty sure you will never see anything that provides plugin compatibility (or something similar) with eclipse.

  63. Anonymous

    My shop are major fans of IDEA, versus our previous hodgepodge of Netbeans/JBoss/various text editors. Our only difficulty is using Maven as an external tool (we're not very fond of the plugin). However, it appears that 6.0 will integrate Maven (woohoo!).

    Great going! Holding breath for 6.0 now.

    1. Anonymous

  64. Anonymous

    Great feature list, but for me and my company full web services (JAX-WS 2.0, JAXB 2.0, etc.) support and a great profiler is really needed.

  65. Anonymous

    It would be great to have web servics 2 support, a good profiler and better team work support (like consol outs porting and code posting with packing).

  66. Anonymous

    HIBERNATE & SPRING support please!!

  67. Anonymous

     it would be great to an advanced team work support as one of the Idea's new features. Description:
    - file sharing and sending
    - voice- and message-based chat over internet

    1. Anonymous

      I don't know... this sounds like re-implementing Jabber to me. I'd just set up a Jabber server to get this stuff.

      I do need team-related stuff, but more IDEA specific. For example: enforced inspections at checkin that are loaded from a web server (preferred) or shared drive. Also, shared code style... that kind of thing.

  68. Anonymous

    I really enjoy the Intellij IDEA. It can beat any IDE with its functionality. New features & lots of plugins... sounds great. But...

     Extremely SLOW local history, SLOW caches update (while IDEA project opening), abnormal memory usage etc. are the real pain for developers even who own fast hardware with great memory volume. Think of Idea 2.6 or 3.0 - really fast & pretty IDE. Large projects (few thousand classes & JSPs) are pretty "incompatible" with IDEA (smile)
    Performance improvements - very important thing for now... 

    Will IDEA be the ever fastest IDE with incredible set of features? ^)


    1. The 5.1 release already has some great performance improvements. I also tried the EAP of Demetra and i have to say that was very impressed by the performance at such as early stage, it looks very promising.

  69. Anonymous

    A few things that I would have liked to see make it:

    1. Have IDEA automatically register all libraries in a particular folder as belonging to your project.  Use Case: When someone adds a library in VCS and you get the latest code, if you dont remember to add the library then u get a whole lot of errors.  This might seem trivial but when you're switching between 3 different versions at different labels and different libraries are being changed all the time it gets very annoying.

    2. Have IDEA use the maven project.xml to automatically fetch and register libraries. We've kinda switched to having maven manage the libraries for us.  We're still using ANT as our build process on our build machine but managing different libraries across lots of projects seems more managable with maven.

    3. Allow modules to be unloaded but still visible in the project.  I like this in eclipse.

    4. Propper starteam support.

    1. +1 on automatically noticing jars added to my lib directory.

      I'd also like an internet-driven registry of documentation for libraries. There's no need for every IDEA developer to separately enter the URL for the JDK docs.

    2. Anonymous

      +1 from me as well on automatically noticing jars added to a lib directory - would be really great if this worked such that if you have a jar with the same name registered as a Global Library, that the auto registering of the project jar automatically picks up the source & JavaDoc paths.

      +1 on point 2 about IDEA using the Maven POM (project.xml) to fetch and register libraries (again, I would like to see this include source and JavaDoc if appropriate).

  70. Anonymous

    I need fast, small and reliable version of IDEA with regactoring. The other features (J2EE support, AspectJ etc.) should be moved to the plug-ins.

    1. Anonymous

      1. Anonymous

    2. Anonymous

    3. Anonymous

      yeah, initializion wise she's a bit of a hog (that's "pig" if u r a Czech)

  71. Anonymous

    Would be great to be able to use the IDEA as an application framework (especially the docking framework) for developing our own applications, similarly to the Netbeans Rich Client Platform or the Eclipse Platform.

  72. Has JetBrains thought of showing (or enabling) only the refactoring options appropriate for the context of what is selected (or where the carat is, etc.)? This has always annoyed me with both IDEA and Eclipse... at all times I have the full gamut of refactorings when only a handful make sense based on what I right-clicked. There are so many refactoring choices, and I haven't memorized all the refactoring titles to recall exactly what they do. Making the list smaller based on context would be a great help.

  73. I like IDEA's ability to show me dependencies of my source code. Sometimes though it would be nice to know the dependencies of a jar file I have. Could IDEA facilitate this without me having to decompile it and create a project?

  74. Anonymous

    - Maven 2 integration. Maven 1 was just a proof of concept (but is used a lot for now).
    - UML class diagrams like in NetBeans 5.5 (absolutly nothing that pollutes the code, not like Poseidon id's or ...)

  75. Anonymous

    Clean and useful Ajax support is a must, I would like to be able to have several components that we can mix and match out of the box, and have an easy way to make our own.

    1. Anonymous

      What AJAX support are you talking about? AJAX is a concept, not code or a library. They already have full syntax highlighting, etc. for JS so AJAX is covered as far as I'm concerned.

  76. Anonymous

    I don't see any JSF support, I would think there would be a wysiwyg form designer along with it, Java Studio Creator 2 has some cool stuff that should be integrated into IDEA in this respect.

    1. Anonymous

      There is. Learn2read.

  77. Anonymous

    I hope AOP gets on the list soon. Just look how very elegant Eclipse has handled AOP. Also with the merge of AspectJ and AspectWerkz, there is only 1 framework to support, so that should not be a problem. I would hate to stop using IntelliJ because I want to use aspects.

  78. Anonymous

    i think the console window gets very slow (plus the whole idea stucks from time to time) when you have a lot of output in the console - think about the gc...
    it would be perfect if there was an option "only keep last xxx kb in the console" or line based (but this is not so good because you never know how long your lines are...).

    1. Settings | General | Limit run/debug consoles output to...

  79. Anonymous

    What makes IDEA great? What causes people to turn their noses up at the free Eclipse? The reason is because IDEA is still the best Java editor out there and anyone who still uses a keyboard to create software will have more fun, make less mistakes and (most importantly) code orders of magnitude faster than the fastest eMacs, Vi or textpad user out there. In the days of IDEA 2.5, most of us turned our noses up at JBuilder, Visual Age, JDeveloper and other such offerings; despite the fact that they all offered more features than IDEA, you could still get more done in less time with IDEA owing to the fact that most of your time is spent editing code - something IDEA excelled at.

    IDEA should stick to this role as the IDE that changes the way you work. Stuff like AspectJ support, Maven integration and Tapestry are all features that some are seemingly desperate for, but for each feature that 10% of the users are clamouring for on this page at least 50% would rather not have forced on them. Becoming a JBuilder or Visual Age is a risk to be avoided. Anything that doesn't benefit the majority of the userbase or "change the way we code" should be left as an optional plugin.

    1. Anonymous

      I have to assume that your percentages, "10%" and "50%", are generalizations and not actual statistics. (smile)

      I agree with you and also do not want to see IDEA become another bloated IDE or go the way of JBuilder; that's what the plug-in architecture is for. Nevertheless, I would argue that Maven 2 support is something that many users want (more than 10%), a majority of users (more then 50%) would take advantage of. Perhaps not right away, but eventually since Maven is the new Ant.

      Just as now a vast majority of Java projects use Ant (whereas a few short years ago barely any did), I, and others, strongly believe that a majority of future projects will use Maven. Many open-source projects have already made the move, or are making the move towards Maven; the shop I am at is moving to Maven; most of the shops of my friends/colleges work at are moving to Maven (some already have).

      Since Maven "is" your project, I think good integration into the IDE is important. Plus, it would be great if IDEA could pick up all of (or most of) a project's settings from a Maven POM, (and perhaps generate a PM based on an IDEA project or module's settings). This way you only have to define/configure a project once. The shop I work at lets the developers select their own IDE. This allows everyone the advantage of using a tool they are comfortable with, and thus increases their productivity. The one downside is that as people move from one project to the next, they need to spend time setting up and configuring that project in their IDE of choice. While Ant can handle the build process and keep a consistent build environment, Maven is helping teams to move towards a consistent development environment. An IDE automatically configuring itself using a Maven POM would eliminate those wasted 30-minutes here, and 2-hours there as developers configure their IDE to work on the next project.

      And in a perfect world, JetBrains could make Maven support plug-in, such that if you or others didn't want such features, you could just un-install (or deactivate) the plug-in.

      1. There's already a project implemeting the maven integration(mevenide-idea).
        There's also a project at javaforge here

        There doesn't seem to be much activity in any of them so i'm not really sure that they're active.

  80. Anonymous

    Don't know how this will go down but ...

    I would really like to have a  pluggable language  implementation for  C/C++.
    It's a real pain in the ass using another (inferior) IDE to code native parts of my Java apps (I admit this is relatively infrequent).

    And I still write C++ code.  I know IDEA was always meant to be a Java IDE, but is C++ language support feasible given the abstract language model used for JavaScript et al.  It realy hurts having to use Eclipse C++ plugins when you are used to the code-cutting completeness of IDEA.

  81. Anonymous

    I think it would be really great if IntelliJ could have Matisse support. I find Matisse very nice. More an more people will be writing code to it, so it would be very good to be able to continue using IntelliJ on that code.

  82. Anonymous

    Without AOP-support, IDEA is growing obsolete for my needs. Once you've had your first hit of AspectJ, there's no going back. Limited support for Spring-style AOP is well and good, but just not enough.

  83. Anonymous

    It would be great if IntelliJ would allow the user to customize the equals and hashcode templates.  There are certain scenarios that the generated equals method doesn't account for:
    Comparing a Date and a Timestamp cause problems.  A date isn't a timestamp, but by the date equals method that can be equal (though the opposite is not true).
    Proxy classes cause problems when comparing the classes.  Comparing a hibernate proxy class and a normal class will also return false.

  84. Anonymous

    If you implement Maven 2 support, you might want to take a look at the free m2 book, downloable from
    Read that and you'll understand why maven 2 is worth the effort.

  85. Anonymous

    i like IDEA, it's easy, but the examples i can find is so little.

     so plz and more and more and more and more examples in IDEA6.

  86. Anonymous

    Are there any plans for TestNG-support?

  87. Anonymous

    Visual SourceSafe 2005 integration please

  88. Anonymous

    I've been using IDEA for years. The version 5.1 seems to be much much slower than 3.x or 4.x. I am using a workstation with PentiumD and 1G RAM, still it takes almost 5 minutes to open up a project. If the garbage collection starts, I know that it is time for a coffee break. Could I disable at least some of the features in IDEA to make is faster??

  89. Anonymous

    I'd like you to add jsf/myfaces feature greatly.Myfaces(tomahawk) is the powerful ui component for the presentation.And i like use it into  jsf.So i hope you provide support early.
    You may refer to ExadelStudio plugins.

  90. Anonymous

    Can we just get the display issue in the File View fixed? When multiple rows are selected, only the last selection is visible, the rest gets effectively blanked out. Very annoying.

  91. Anonymous

    What about a real multi project support ? I mean I don't want to have to 2 idea opened in order to see 2 differents .ipr. You never know which one is active. even if I load all in one one ipr using the module facility (even if in some case it does not makes sens because I want to open 2 different project that have no direct relations) it take a lot of memory (no way to activate/desactivate temporarly on project in order to use less memory).

    A practical example is that I always have often both the head and patch branch opened...

    In a past lived I used to work with the visual studio ide and that was something well handled : One the left panel you could load/unload (activate/desactivate) any project and so the memory pbl was handelabled.

     Does anyone else has the same pbl or has find solution... elsewhere this is something JetBrains should really work on (I think) !

  92. Anonymous

    What about RelaxNG ? Or it is not in the mainstream?

  93. Anonymous

    "Floating editor tab groups"

     Would love to see this feature. It would greatly improve working with a multi-monitor setup. Sizing the IDEA window across multiple monitors and trying to arrange the splits, etc, is exceedingly painful.

     Please re-add this feature (smile)

  94. Hi,

    I couldn't login to JIRA. Clicking on the Login button did not present me with a login form. There are a couple of things missing in the JSF integration:

    1- Inside the style attribute of the standard html elements, IDEA should support CSS syntax assistance.
    2- Inside the styleClass atrribute of the standard html elements, IDEA should support CSS class name lookup and completion


  95. Anonymous


    I'd like to see the following Eclipse feature in IDEA:

    Double-click on any window title (especially on output and edit windows) would maximize that particular window. The second double-click would restore it to the usual size. This would be nice for quickly browsing any run/debug output longer than a few lines and then go back to fixing the problem in the editor.

    I know you can resize the windows by dragging the sash widget between the output window and the editor above it, but that takes way too long.


  96. Anonymous

    Editing a JSF page IDEA shows an error on every JSF tag outside the f:view tag.

    This isn't correct because there are many component libraries (for example AJAX4JSF on that use a custom version of the UIViewRoot component. IDEA should only test if the outermost JSF tag is associated to a UIComponent that extends UIViewRoot.

    I hope this suggestion can help the full integration of JSF into IDEA 


  97. Anonymous

    Having in mind that SAP has already release a Java EE 5 compliant application server - isn' t it a good idea to have it supported as well, having in mind the focus on JSF and EJB 3?

     More info on the topic is available here and SAP NetWeaver Java EE 5 edition is downloadable from here.


  98. Anonymous

    I really wanna the feature for support ClearCase.

    1. Anonymous