IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3 Help

Localizing Forms

The GUI Designer extends I18N Support to the GUI forms, and enables you to find components that contain hardcoded strings and transfer these strings to properties files. Having produced the various locales, you can change them at design time and preview the way the localized forms will look like.

In this section, you can find general recommendations for applying i18n support to GUI forms:

General Localization Procedure

To localize your GUI forms, perform the following major steps

  1. Make sure that Hard-Coded Strings inspection is activated. For more information, refer to Recognizing Hard-Coded String Literals. If the inspection is activated, the appropriate tool tips for components display in the UI Designer tool window, and quick-fix i18nize property<name> is displayed in the Form Workspace and UI Designer tool window.

  2. Create properties files for each locale you want to provide for the GUI, and a default properties file without a postfix.

    For example, for a dialog developed in English and localized to German and French, you might create the following properties files:

    1. Subscription.properties

    2. Subscription_de.properties

    3. Subscription_fr.properties

  3. Go through the form, and select each component that contains hardcoded strings. Click the quick-fix icon, or press Alt+Enter to show the list of available intention actions, and select i18nize property <name>, as shown on the following image:

    img
  4. In the Internationalize Hardcoded String dialog, extract hard-coded string literals to the specified properties files. For more information, refer to Hard-coded string literals.

  5. Edit the extracted strings in the resource bundle. For more information, refer to Resource bundles.

Suppressing I18nize Hard-Coded String Quick-fix

To suppress i18nize quick fix

  1. Select a component that contains hardcoded text property.

  2. Click the quick-fix icon, or press Alt+Enter to show the list of available intention actions.

  3. Hover over the i18nize property <name> quick-fix, and click the right arrow icon rightArrowInMenu.png (or press right arrow key) to reveal the submenu, as shown on the following image:

    img
  4. Click the option Suppress for component or Suppress for all components. The list suppressed inspections appears in the GUI Designer tool window:

    img

Changing Design-Time Locale

To change locale at design time

  1. With the GUI Designer tab having the focus, click the Change Local combo box changeLocale.png on the main toolbar.

  2. Select the desired locale from the list.

Last modified: 19 March 2024