The last couple of years I have been using Aptana Studio exclusively as my IDE of choice, after deciding it offered the power of Eclipse in a more user friendly format. I find the standard Aptana theme very easy on the eyes when coding for long amounts of time. Unfortunately though sometimes the colour scheme can make finding matching brackets a pain.
Luckily though a friend filled me on in the “Goto matching Bracket” feature. To find a matching bracket in Aptana Studio or Eclipse simply put your cursor on the line containing the bracket you would like to find the partner for and press CTRL + SHIFT + P. This will open up a little menu box with an option labelled “Goto matching Bracket”, selecting this will then magically transport your cursor to the line of its matching bracket.
Wow I thought, what an amazing feature but it also got me thinking if it took me so long to find out that handy feature, what other tricks am I missing that would make me more productive in the IDE? So I got looking for other handy tips to make life easier in Eclipse / Aptana Studio and this is what I got:
- CTRL + SHIFT + P – Find a matching bracket
- CTRL + O – Brings up a window illustrating the outline of a class
- CTRL + E – Change the editor focus to another file that is already open
- CTRL + Space – Speed up writing code with code completion
- CTRL + D – Delete the current line in the editor
- CTRL + SHIFT + D – Duplicate the current line
- CTRL + SHIFT + Del – Delete the rest of the content on a line after the cursor
- CTRL + SHIFT + R – Run / open a resource
- CTRL + L – Go to line
- CTRL + . – For those with errors in their code, go to the next line reporting an error
- CTRL + , – Go to the previous error line