The Milestone 1 release, unveiled late last week, is a precursor to the general release due this fall, said. OSGi application development support includes automatic project configuration, coding assistance and inspections and syntax and error highlighting.

Other capabilities in the IDE include on-the-fly detection of dead code, Java Enterprise Edition 6 support and capabilities for Google's Android mobile platform and the Google App Engine cloud platform. Applications can be deployed from IntelliJ Idea to App Engine.

Usability also has been improved. Also featured is initial support for the PHP language and improvements for using UML (Unified Modeling Language).

"We want to demonstrate the progress we've made toward IntelliJ Idea 9 and show developers what it has in store for them," said Max Shafirov, IntelliJ IDEA project lead, in a statement released by the company. "A milestone release is also a great chance for our users to voice their opinions and provide input on areas that still need improvement. We will carefully evaluate and utilize all feedback. Developers, in turn, can already start using the latest features we've implemented."