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Comment by famousactress | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people find a dark look and feel much less distracting. Now that we’ve added it, you can focus more on the code and less on the IDE.

(Above screenshot: http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/d... )

I can't tell if we're being punk'd. I'm expected to take that screenshot as an example of a less distracting user interface for creative work? My condolences to anyone using the presumably more distracting previous version.

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I think the aim was to show how the dark look looked across various windows and panes.

This x10. Why is the snarky/brain-dead reply always top on HN, when a perfectly reasonable interpretation is available?

Obviously, the intent with the screenshot was to show how the theme applies across multiple different windows.

I found it obvious that the new screenshot was showing off the dark theme. I found it far less obvious whether they expected to it to show a "more clean and functional" interface.

Here's a bit less cluttered one..

http://imgur.com/rhZQZ

With the search for class/file/symbol navigation it is usually possible to live in this mode most part of the day :-)

Oh thank goodness. I'll hold off on setting up the relief fund then :)

With the "Alt double tap and hold" keyboard shortcut, you can even remove all the side buttons

I use PyCharm (which is essentially the same product). I love the IDE features, and it's possible to build a far less cluttered workspace. Screenshot:

http://i.imgur.com/C6Uq6.png

Another minimal approach in RubyMine (another IntelliJ IDEA 12 based product):

http://i.imgur.com/C9zax.png

Just because the IDE has a lot of features doesn't mean you need to have them all enabled at once.

PyCharm is absolutely lovely. I'd suggest the EAP program since it has a new new UI as well.

http://confluence.jetbrains.com/display/PYH/JetBrains+PyChar...

How do you hide the top toolbar completely? (http://i.imgur.com/rhZQZ.png)

There is an option to toggle the toolbar in the menu: View > Toolbar

It has already been unchecked. But then I found View > Navigation Bar. That's exactly what I was looking for.

As a person who suffers from black floaters in his eyes the black UI elements are always welcome. The elements by themselves might not be less distracting but they make my floaters a lot less distracting.

That's a debugging view on a really small window. The bottom panes only show up while you're debugging and the left pane is your project browser, which you can show or hide with Ctrl-1 or Cmd-1 depending on your OS.

I use it at 1680x1050 on my rMBP and it's fantastic.

The screenshot shows a debugging session. Both the debugging panel at the bottom and the project panel at the left can be collapsed. So it's not that bad.

But in general, yes, i agree in that Intellij IDEA's interface is quite overloaded. I haven't tried any language-specific version of the IDE, like PhpStorm or PyCharm; maybe those are less loaded, IDK.

Phpstorm user myself, it's as overloaded, but having used most of the competing IDE's I think Phpstorm is one of the cleanest / lightest.

Actually you are able to customize almost everything. Just have a look at the screenshots below.

Without toolbar and tool window bars: https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/shared/minimized_with_project...

Without toolbar, tool window bars and project window: https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/shared/minimized.png?w=bea92c...

Full screen: https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/shared/minimized_full_screen....

Yeah, I use Intellij daily, and the UI is quite poor. Little things like the way tabs work, the way the debugger buttons are inscrutable, the way that the vertical splitting works with opening files using the C-S-n shortcut, etc are quite annoying.

It's redeeming quality is that the only worse UIs are every other IDE. (Expecting perhaps Visual Studio, which is not a viable option for non-MS shops)

> I can't tell if we're being punk'd.

You just completely and utterly missed that it's a 950x570 screenshot (so essentially a stamp) during a debugging session with the visual debugger taking the bottom half of the screen.

No, I caught that. I just honestly don't think what's witnessed in that screenshot would be repaired by a screen of any resolution. It's a UI/UX tragedy of a severely high order.

> It's a UI/UX tragedy of a severely high order.

An editor with a project tree is a UI/UX tragedy?

What does that resolution correspond to, an Asus eee?

I haven't spotted much change in the layout of the UI in between 11->12, but the new styling is definitely (IMHO) much easier on the eyes.

(And 11's was still IMHO less distracting than Eclipse, period)

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