My Favorite Shortcut Keys

Tired of typing? Learn some shortcuts.

As I am giving presentations or even just peer coding it is quite often that someone watching me will say “how did you do that?” My initial thought is, “…. what?” Shortkey keys become second nature real quick in development. As a side not to the rest of my Flex based development entries, I want to highlight some of the shortcut keys that have made life in Eclipse/Flash Builder worth living – and I’d like to know what other shortcut keys others use. (Other than Ctrl+S, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V)

For all of these, the MAC equivalent to Ctrl is Command.

Ctrl+Space
Word completion.

Ctrl+D
Deletes a selected line(s) of code.

Alt+Arrow Up/Down
Moves a selected line(s) of code either up or down one line. Much better than constant cut/paste.

Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Up/Down
Copies a selected line(s) of code, pastes immediately above(up) or below(down) the selected line(s) of code. Much better than constant copy/paste.

Ctrl+Shift+F
Check out Flex Formatting for best Results! Formats your code.

Ctrl+L
Go straight to a particular line in a file.

Ctrl+B
Builds the applcation.

Ctrl+Shift+D
Generate Comments (great for ASDocs).

Ctrl+Shift+C
Toggle comment out selected code.

Ctrl+Shift+W
Close all open windows.

Ctrl + Arrow Left/Right
Move an entire word.

Ctrl+Y
Redo the last action that was undone.

Ctrl+Shift+Y
Lowercase selected word.

Ctrl+Shift+X.
Uppercase selected word.

A full list of the Flex Builder Cheat Sheet can be found here.
FlexBuilderCheatSheet