Gregg Sporar's Blog

What Happened to My Shortcuts?

The beta release of NetBeans 6.0 is scheduled to appear next week. As more and more long time users of NetBeans try out 6.0, I suspect many folks will be surprised to learn that some of the keyboard shortcuts have been changed.

Which leads to the natural question: Why? The answer is that the overhaul of the IDE's editor infrastructure provided an opportunity to add new features. There were so many new features that it became difficult to find available keyboard shortcuts. That realization led to a thorough examination of the existing keyboard shortcuts which then led to the changes.

As an example: one of my favorite shortcuts was Alt-Shift-F which used to Fix Imports in the current source file. In NetBeans 6.0, however, Alt-Shift-F cleans up the formatting in a file. To do a Fix Imports I have to use Ctrl-Shift-I. Which I suppose does sort of make more sense - after all the key concept in this function is "Imports" not "Fix."

You can change the keyboard shortcuts using Tools > Options > Keymap. In addition to the default keyboard shortcuts, NetBeans 6.0 includes several profiles of keyboard shortcuts. If you want the old NetBeans shortcuts, select the profile named NetBeans55:

Note, however, that if you choose the NetBeans55 profile then some of the new features will not have keyboard shortcuts defined - you will have to assign shortcuts for them. On the left is the Source menu when the NetBeans55 profile is selected and on the right is the same menu using the default profile.

Comments

• It's worth noting the current Daily-Development builds are including a Keyboard Shortcuts cheat-sheet in PDF format at Help menu: Keyboard Shortcuts Card.

  A complete list of shortcuts can be found at: http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/KeymapProfileFor60

  A PDF version (different than the cheat-sheet in the daily build) can be found at: http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/attach/HelpSetForAllSeasons/shortcuts.pdf

  Posted by: jschek on September 11, 2007 at 03:45 PM

• Regarding 'fix imports' - the new mapping might make more sense but it's a physiological nightmare - try doing it with just your right hand, it feels horrible - the old ctrl-shift-f for formatting and alt-shift-f to fix the import was much much more user friendly.

  Have made some other notes about my first thoughts here:
  http://www.jonathanhfisher.co.uk/b2/?p=31

  Posted by: jhfisher on September 12, 2007 at 06:06 AM

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