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2 Replies Last post: Jan 22, 2012 6:36 AM by James Foster  
James Foster Newbie
James Foster
6 posts since
Jan 21, 2012
Currently Being Moderated

Jan 22, 2012 6:32 AM

More detail Content Tooltips

One thing I've found useful when I used Visual Assist was the amount of information that appears in their tooltips. Images for everything listed are at the bottom of this post. Here are the main things I would love to see in IDEA (and specifically for Scala, which can be difficult to read):


  1. Comments
    • When working in a large project you may not be familiar with all of the code, it's nice to see the comments for anything you're working with without having to open up the file it is in.
  2. Syntax highlighting within tooltips (image at bottom of this post)
    • Take the same syntax highlighting settings that you have in the editor, and be able to see that same highlighting in the tooltip.
    • I go extremely heavy on syntax highlighting (which is one thing I love that IDEA lets me do), and so it would be excellent to be able to see those details within a tooltip.
  3. Syntax highlighting within auto-complete drop-downs (image at bottom of this post)
  4. Showing read/writes and other instances of an object with a single click (image at bottom of this post)
    • In Visual Assist (VA) if you single-click on function, variable, enum, etc., you will see all other instances of it (like when you double click on a word in IDEA and press CTRL+F), but more importantly, in VA it colors writes to that variable differently than reads, making it very easy to spot all instances within a chunk of code where something may be changed or used.

 


Comments and Syntax highlighting within tooltips

http://www.wholetomato.com/products/features/images/hoverFromSource.gif

 

 

Syntax highlighting within auto-complete drop-downs

http://www.wholetomato.com/products/features/images/colorListbox.png

 

Showing read/writes and other instances of an object with a single click

http://www.wholetomato.com/products/images/featureFindSymbolUnderCursor.png

Thanks to the developers of IDEA, it really is a great IDE, offers way more flexibility than some of the other IDEs at a fraction of the price. In fact even though Visual Assist has some great features, it's missing a lot of things that IDEA can do, especially in the syntax highlighting area.

Jason Zaugg Novice
Jason Zaugg
106 posts since
Oct 20, 2009
Currently Being Moderated
Jan 21, 2012 12:43 PM in response to: James Foster
Re: More detail Content Tooltips

1. Have you tried View, Quick Documentation and View, Quick Definition? You can use these in almost any context -- when the caret is in a identifier in the editor; on an entry in an autocompletion drop down, on a class or method in Go To Class or Go To Symbol.

 

2/3. Not a bad idea; should be consistent though across Java and Scala.

 

4. It's better to use Find, Highlight Usages in file than using the text search for this. I like it so much I've enabled it by default under Settings, Editor, Highlight Usages of Element at Caret. (Try this on the keywords match, case, def, val, and class to see the result expression(s), too!). If you want to distinguish reads/writes, use Show Usages or it's bigger brother Find Usages.

 

-jason

nfoste82 wrote:

 

One thing I've found useful when I used Visual Assist was the amount of information that appears in their tooltips. Images for everything listed are at the bottom of this post. Here are the main things I would love to see in IDEA (and specifically for Scala, which can be difficult to read):


  1. Comments
    • When working in a large project you may not be familiar with all of the code, it's nice to see the comments for anything you're working with without having to open up the file it is in.
  2. Syntax highlighting within tooltips (image at bottom of this post)
    • Take the same syntax highlighting settings that you have in the editor, and be able to see that same highlighting in the tooltip.
    • I go extremely heaving on syntax highlighting (which is one thing I love that IDEA lets me do), and so it would be excellent to be able to see those details within a tooltip.
  3. Syntax highlighting within auto-complete drop-downs (image at bottom of this post)
  4. Showing read/writes and other instances of an object with a single click (image at bottom of this post)
    • In Visual Assist (VA) if you single-click on function, variable, enum, etc., you will see all other instances of it (like when you double click on a word in IDEA and press CTRL+F), but more importantly, in VA it colors writes to that variable differently than reads, making it very easy to spot all instances within a chunk of code where something may be changed or used.

 


Comments and Syntax highlighting within tooltips

http://www.wholetomato.com/products/features/images/hoverFromSource.gif

 

 

Syntax highlighting within auto-complete drop-downs

http://www.wholetomato.com/products/features/images/colorListbox.png

 

Showing read/writes and other instances of an object with a single click

http://www.wholetomato.com/products/images/featureFindSymbolUnderCursor.png

Thanks to the developers of IDEA, it really is a great IDE, offers way more flexibility than some of the other IDEs at a fraction of the price. In fact even though Visual Assist has some great features, it's missing a lot of things that IDEA can do, especially in the syntax highlighting area.

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James Foster Newbie
James Foster
6 posts since
Jan 21, 2012
Currently Being Moderated
Jan 22, 2012 6:36 AM in response to: Jason Zaugg
Re: More detail Content Tooltips

Thanks Jason, I'll give all of those things a try, the more the better.

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