http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2006/06/numbered-bookmarks/

Once I accidentally pressed a key combination which created a numbered bookmark and I had no idea what that icon in the gutter meant. I like it when IDEA's menus always mention the hotkey shortcut, so my first reaction was to hover my mouse over the icon, to see what its tooltip would tell about the meaning of the icon, life, universe and everything. But the tooltip told nothing.

The bookmark tooltips could be improved so that they would give more information.

Left gutter (next to code)

Currently the tooltips for the bookmark icons on the left gutter say what reads on that line. This is redundant and pointless, because the user anyways already sees the code when he sees the bookmark.

These tooltips could be improved to say the following things:

• It is a bookmark
• What kind of a bookmark it is (bookmark, numbered bookmark)
• Which hotkeys will bring you to that bookmark
• Which hotkeys create/remove such bookmarks

Right gutter (next to scroll bar)

Currently the tooltips for the bookmark markers on the right gutter say what reads on that line (as suggested in IDEADEV-416). I understand that the point of this is that the user could quickly find out where a bookmark points without going there. However, since it shows only one line of code, it does not tell much about the context of the bookmark, and the tooltip does not reach its goal well.

These tooltips could be improved to say the following things:

• Show the bookmarked line and lines close to it, maybe 10-15 lines (If the bookmark is inside a method, near the beginning or end of the method block, it might be best to show only lines belonging to that method, to avoid showing unrelevant information)
• Which hotkeys will bring you to that bookmark

Breakpoints and other stuff in the gutter

Breakpoint icon tooltips could be improved in a similar fashion. They could say in addition to what they currently say:

• What kind of a breakpoint it is (line breakpoint, method breakpoint)
• Which hotkeys add/remove breakpoints
• Which hotkey opens up the "View Breakpoints" dialog

If there are other icons which show up in the gutter (nothing comes to my mind right now), maybe the usefulness of their tooltips could also be reexamined.