A few weeks ago we finished the Early Access Program for the upcoming release of IntelliJ IDEA 12. We would like to thank all of you who evaluated the preview builds and submitted your feedback. We really appreciate support from the community, watching closely every new feature we announced and providing us with comments and bug reports. It would be absolutely impossible to do what we did without your contributions!

Today we are excited to announce that IntelliJ IDEA 12, the next major version of our flagship Java IDE, is finally released and available for download.

As usual, it is difficult to list all the new features in the release. Every single day we try to not only add something new, but also rethink existing features to make them even more useful for your productivity and usability. So let me highlight the most exciting features awaiting you in IntelliJ IDEA 12.

New User Interface and Darcula Theme

The newest release of IntelliJ IDEA comes with a redesigned user interface, along with a new stylish dark look and feel called Darcula. The new interface is supposed to be more clean and functional. 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.

The new dark look and feel is fully customizable, so you can create your own dark themes, supported natively by every component of the IDE.

Brand New Compiler Mode

In addition to the interface, IntelliJ IDEA 12 introduces a completely new approach to compiling the project, which is now much faster and provides better user experience. We have rebuilt it from the ground up to move the compiler to a separate process. Now the project can be compiled automatically in background on every change you make, so you can run it almost instantly any time.

For more details about the new compiler mode see this blog post.

Java 8

Another important feature is support for Java 8, the next generation of the Java platform, announced by Oracle this year. IntelliJ IDEA 12 embraces the cutting edge version of the language and provides code assistance for the new syntax, such as lambda expressions, method references and default methods. Now you can try the new features of JDK 8 in your projects.

Android UI Designer

Over the last year Android has become the-fastest-growing mobile platform. Ever since IntelliJ IDEA introduced support for Android in its free and open-source Community Edition, we’ve worked hard to make it better with each new release. Finally IntelliJ IDEA 12 comes with well-crafted UI designer, one the most anticipated features in this release.

Read more details about the new UI designer and enjoy a demo in our blog.

Spring Frameworks Support

Intellij IDEA 12 comes with significantly improved support for Spring. The new update includes much better performance, support for XML and annotation-based configurations for the project simultaneously, enhanced dependency diagram (with drag and drop support) and of course code assistance for even more frameworks, such as Integration, Web Flow, MVC, Security, Batch and others.

Play 2.0 Support for Java and Scala

One more remarkable feature many people have been waiting for is support for the newest version of the Play framework. IntelliJ IDEA 12 enables you to create, run and debug Play 2.0 applications easily using both Java and Scala languages, with advanced code assistance, including templates support, formatter, refactorings and many other features.

Database Development Tools

While IntelliJ IDEA is frequently called the most intelligent Java IDE, it also provides powerful database tools and support for SQL. The new release reveals more exciting features for developers who use databases in their projects.

With IntelliJ IDEA 12, you not only have intelligent code assistance for SQL, but can also design your database right from the IDE. As databases are part of most projects today, it is time for us to help developers work with them more productively.

Other important features introduced in IntelliJ IDEA 12 include:

• Intelligent code formatting
• Better management tools for J2EE application servers, with support Cloud Foundry and CloudBees cloud platforms
• Support for Drools Expert with advanced code assistance
• Cucumber for JVM support

To see the full list of new features in IntelliJ IDEA 12 and to download the edition of your choice, please visit our website.