Introducing the IDEA editor - IntelliJ IDEA in Action - page 23

The editor is the heart of the IDE . While developing in IDEA , you'll spend the
bulk of your time working in the editor, so learning its features is the first step
toward putting the environment to effective use. Many excellent editors are on
the market, so it's only natural to wonder what makes IDEA 's editor so special.
This chapter will familiarize you with the editor's basic interface and editing
capabilities, and the next will explore the features that truly set it apart.
2.1 Exploring the IDEA interface
Most of the IDEA window is dedicated to showing the contents of an open file and
permitting you to edit it. In addition to that main panel, the editor window con-
tains a number of screen artifacts that relate contextual information about the file
you're editing. At the top of the window are the editor tabs ; the gutter is the area to
the left of the window, and the marker bar runs down the right side of the window.
These can all be seen in figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 An example of the editor with multiple files open. Note the tabs for each file, the gutter
on the left, and the marker bar on the right.