A week has gone since JetBrains announced the free and open source IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition.

I have been giving it a try and is actually pretty satisfied with it. Even though I am not as familiar with all the shortcuts as I am with NetBeans, it feels comfortable. It does not differ that much. The only problem I have encountered with the default setup is the shortcut for comment/uncomment code (Shift+/). But this is mainly because I am using Swedish or Norwegian keyboard setup where the / is entered by hitting Shift+7. This was easily fixed by adding Ctrl+Shift+7 as a shortcut combination.

I could not find a live template for test methods, but it was easy to create a new one. Here is a simple example:

public void test$NAME$(){
   $END$
}

I am not sure if I like the way multiple projects are handled. If you work with multiple projects in IDEA, each project is opened in a separate frame. In NetBeans you can choose to have multiple projects open in the same workspace and/or group them in project groups. It is probably just a matter of habits, but I like the flexibility to be able to decide that myself and not be forced to open every new project in a new frame.

To conclude, I really like IDEA Community Edition, an will most probably choose use it when I am working on a project where I am in no direct need of Java EE support in the IDE. Otherwise, NetBeans is still my favorite IDE. Eclipse is still out of the question as long as Maven is involved.