Part 3: IntelliJ - Navigating within the editor

The editor is where you will write all your code. You will need to get used to moving around it very quickly and without a mouse.

The obvious, and yet slow way, is to only use the arrow keys. They are good for moving a couple of positions, but holding it down or moving long distances is not the best thing to do.

Instead, here are some better shortcuts to get you started.

The classic home and end buttons take you to the start or end of the line respectively

We are going to change the settings, by using the greatest shortcut, type Use "CamelHumps" words" and toggle this on. With this on, the use of ctrl + → and ctrl + ←, to not only move the caret between key terms but over the camel case words (instead of the whole word).

alt + ↑ and alt + ↓ allows you to move between different methods in the file.

Next, we are going to download a plugin called AceJump. First search for plugins via the greatest shortcut. Then select the marketplace tab, search for AceJump, download it, and restart Intellij. This gives you the ability to move the caret by using characters, it's like vim. To use it, use ctrl + ;, and use the side arrows, which will pop up the characters and you type the characters to take you there.

To make it easier to navigate, we can reduce some of the noise, especially the imports, and methods (to leave only the methods signature, and collapsed imports), using ctrl + - to reduces the size multiple times, and ctrl + + to uncollapse.

To go to a specific line use ctrl + g, this is also great for getting close to area you want to be next to.

The project structure tab shows fields, methods in the class, accessing this using alt + 7 and arrow keys to go to those locations.

The good old ctrl+f to take you to a keyword that you know.

A nonobvious way to move around is to navigate between errors, using F2 to go to the next error and shift + F2 to go to the previous error.

Bookmark lines, using ctrl+shift+number (repeat to remove bookmark), then to go back to it ctrl+number. To view all bookmarks use shift+F11.

This is more of a general shortcut, but if you want to move from the method definition to it's usage and vice versa try ctrl + b. This works for fields, variables, etc. This can also take you to other files.

Other useful shortcuts, which I don't really use:

If in a large file and you have lost the location of the caret, use ctrl + m.

To move caret between matching code block braces, press Ctrl + Shift + M.

To navigate between code blocks, press Ctrl + [ or Ctrl + ].

Ctrl + Shift + E takes you to a list of all previous locations.

To create anonymous (non numbered) bookmarks on a line press F11.

To create a book using letters, press ctrl + F11, then type the letter.

I don't use bookmarks that extensively, but there are a lot of features that you can play around with (jetbrains.com/help/idea/bookmarks.html#book..)