Syntax Highlighter

2010-02-17

ALT+SHIFT+A = AWESOME

How did I miss ALT+SHIFT+A in CFEclipse for like half a year??

Could be the most useful shortcut ever found in an IDE for professional development.

For those that have not had the pleasure yet, this will enable/disable block selection mode. Block selection mode will allow you to select any text block in your page without having to also select the characters on all the lines between, only the lines that fall within the left most and right most points of selection!

Wow I hear you all thinking, that's the best, but no, it gets better!

You can select a straight line up and down and when you start typing every character you type is copied to every line in the selection.

You so have to try it, it is great, so great in fact that Microsoft is apparently going to copy it for their next version of Visual Studio, still kicking myself for not reading enough release notes to have found it earlier but just glad to be able to save time using it now.

Oh and if you are playing around with Android Development platform, you will need to re-assign some of Android's default key combos to use CTRL+SHIFT+A instead or it will block your access to it. Well you could just change the block selection one but hey I installed it first so it gets to stay in my install!

ColdFusion, better with every passing day...