Efficient usage of WebStorm IDE

Question

I've recently fallen in love in WebStorm as an IDE for JavaScript development. The problem is, I come from a world of vim and lightweight editors, so I probably can't fully appreciate all the power that comes with IDE. Yes, I've seen the presentations and read the docs, but there's a lot of features and I'm not sure which of them are truly useful.

So, here goes my question: how do you use WebStorm and what do you find most useful? Any power-usage tips? Configuration hacks? Plugins worth mentioning?

I'm not looking for a list of features, I'm looking for a real-world usage examples and impressions.

PS. I work mostly with pure JS + Canvas element and some NodeJS.

Answer 1

Some random thoughts, maybe more later....

In the help, definitely read the Basic Concepts and skim the WebStorm Usage Guidelines for actions that you care about.

Learn to use Ctrl-Shift-A. It allows you to 1uickly find actions you can do by typing part of them. With that you can find anything once you know it exists.

WebStorm's (like IntelliJ) best magic is its code completion and refactoring features, which come from its code parsing and awareness. It figures a lot of stuff out, but you can help it out by making you have good source files. Put the commented versions of the libraries you use in your project so it can use those comments to display in the doc popups (just having them in the directory is all you need).

Be sure to leave the tips on.

Their forums are useful, but if you have a problem or feature request put it right into youtrack.com. They are much more responsive there. You can also vote for the stuff you want added.

And if you haven't seen it yet, there is a VIM plugin which will give you VIM editor keys, called IdeaVim.