Apache NetBeans Fits the Pieces Together. Quickly and easily develop desktop, mobile, and web applications with Java, JavaScript, HTML5, PHP, C/C and more. Apache NetBeans is free and open source and is governed by the Apache Software Foundation. Today I’m going to share with you some shortcut keys for refactoring Java code in NetBeans IDE. Use these shortcuts to boost your coding productivity. Alt + Enter: When the cursor is at the line marked as erroneous or problematic, press this shortcut will show up the suggestions (hints) to fix the error/problem.

Most developers spend the lion's share of their time in the development environment. But few use at least half of the opportunities that exist in the IDE, thus making a part of their work boring, monotonous, slow... No, it's not our way! We should use our main working tool to the full force, to squeeze the most out of it, and to move all the most uninteresting, repetitive actions to the shoulders of the program.

And if anyone is interested,
here is the description of the main innovations and opportunities of NetBeans,
grouped by releases.

I do not want and will not describe the standard tips such as «supports PHP 5. *, CSS 3. *, SVN, Git, etc», «Light Smarty» and the rest of the obvious things. I would like to share some things that have repeatedly helped me in the netbeans customization, and are often left unnoticed or unused by colleagues (according to my observations and questions in Twitter). We start from far — from IDE setting.

Netbeans settings

Remove unnecessary

The default editor has not so much space left for the code. It’s full of different toolbars, additional windows, etc. When the monitor is way over two dozen inches – this would hardly be a kind of a problem. But when the IDE is used on a laptop / a netbook – it starts to annoy.

To begin lets reduce the icons for the main toolbar buttons: View → Toolbars → Small Toolbal Icon

In general, it is strange that they are not made smaller by default.

Even for larger storage space toolbar in the editor can be removed altogether via the context menu in the left panel of the editor.

Also in this menu, you can hide / show numbering of lines.

In addition to all, let’s switch to full screen mode by hitting Alt+Shift+Enter. And one more commonly used keyboard shortcut: Shift+Esc – to maximize the active window, and pressing it again will return the same size window.

As a result of simple manipulations the useful area for the code has increased significantly.

Right away, in the course of reading the article, try these shortcuts in practice:

first — you will see exactly how they work;
secondly — more likely they will not fly out of your head till the end of the next paragraph =)

Code formatting in NetBeans

In 90% of cases IDE fully copes with the task, so let it keep doing this, not us.

However, in the editor, there are some problems with usability of settings of function’s formatting. And sometimes it can turn a long search just one setting to fix the indentation after the method’s description or add a line break. Here’s an example:

Screenshot above is taken from an article in IDE official blog, (kind of tutorial), so that developers, in theory, should be aware of it.

It seems everything is somewhat convenient because you can easily see which field is responsible for a correspondent place in the code. But, unfortunately, backlighting are added not by NetBeans but manually in a graphics editor. Well, as long as such a convenient functionality is not added to the editor — in case of necessity we have to peep at articles like these for formatting code netbeans.

Group multiline alignment in NetBeans

One of the reasons why I at one time did not always allow myself to apply an AutoFormat to the whole file was stray indents for arrays, etc.

But since version 7.1, they added support for group alignment.

Deprived of attention NetBeans features

Automatic delete of hanging spaces. These «invisible friends» can really spoil the nerves. Especially when working in a team.

And then such diff files in the counts appear where except for the gaps nothing has changed.

Call the settings window Tools → Options, tab Editor → General, at the very bottom When Saving Files → Remove Trailing Whitespace. And instead of Never choose either Always, or From Modified Lines Only. And be easy and forget about the extra spaces in your code, IDE will take care of everything.

Also there are several experimental options on the tab Editor → Hints. I recommend including these items without delay:
Variable might have not been initialized and Variable does not seem to be used in its scope
I think there is no need to explain the purpose of each of them. On quite rather big projects in the Zend Framework I did not notice any problems with performance, so you should and even must use these features.

Further on I recommend to enable the option View → Show Versioning menus, thanks to which the current versions of tag or branch will be displayed in the window of tree project for the libraries. The screenshot shows an example for the connected through svn:externals from tags libraries.

There is the possibility to edit the format of these messages: http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqSubversionCustomizeAnnotation

NetBeans color schemes

The default color scheme is not the best, so I think the tailoring of the standard scheme, or even its replacement by another one would be a necessary step to a comfortable development process.

Of premade schemes there is a port for NetBeans of fairly common theme Solarized. It’s available in both light and dark version.
Solarized Colorscheme for NetBeans.

And another dark theme (Twilight) for Netbeans.

NetBeans plugins

Displays the current end of the lines in the file and allows you to change it.
http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/36810/show-and-change-line-endings
In the lower right corner the icon appears. It has an open / closed padlock that displays the current availability of a file for writing, and allows one-click change of this property.
Plug-in for integration of PHP Mess Detector and PHP CodeSniffer into NetBeans and the instruction on installation and configuration:
Support ZenCoding for NetBeans.
https://github.com/lorenzos/ZenCodingNetBeansPlugin#readme

Use: tips&tricks

The first thing you need to teach yourself: to work without a mouse as much as possible. It’s much faster and more productive to work with the keyboard, and more, not to all functionality of IDE could be accessed through the menu items (or it’s hidden so deep you’ll get completely bored with your desire to look for it with the mouse again and again).

NetBeans hotkeys

The first thing you need to start — print a list of the main hot keys, (Help → Keyboard Shortcuts Card) and pry into it until you reach the use of automatism. While now I do try to warm up interest.

If you need to change the case of letters in a long word (variable, etc), what would you do? Reprint the word again? I don’t advice: just select the desired characters, press Ctrl+U, and then — U or uppercase, or L for the lower. And the button S (Switch) pressed after the combination Ctrl+U will change the register for each l

Netbeans Shortcut For Mac