The Plugin adds some additional functionality to the APEX 4.x Search Box, you can change directly to many important pages without using the menu.

Simply enter ? into the search box and see all possible commands.

The Plugin adds a resize bar at the bottom of each textarea.
 
Like you are used to from the browser window. You are now able to vertically resize them to your needs, so that you don't have to deal anymore with textareas which just show a few lines of code.

The changed size of the textarea is stored so that you don't have to resize it again when the page is re-rendered.

Ever wondered why Oracle APEX uses a fixed width for textareas, independent of the size of your browser and your screen?
 
The Plugin will automatically adjust the width of the textareas, so that the unused space is used and you have more room for your code! That will make big SQL statements, or your validation code much more readable.

Sometimes it's a good idea to add a comment to an object in Oracle APEX (e.g. a page item) to document what the purpose or the behaviour of the object is. But because only a few objects have a comment, it's likely that other developers don't notice the comment when they look at the object.
 
That's why the Plugin automatically highlights the "Comment Anchor" when there is a value in the comment. So that you never miss the comment again.

The same highlighting is done for the "Conditions", "Security" and "Build Option" anchors.

The "Display As" select list for page items has a lot of entries and it makes it sometimes hard to quickly select the item type you want to set.

The Plugin replaces the existing field with two select lists. The first field contains item type groups (eg. Display Text or Date Picker). The second field depends on the selected value of the first field and will just show item types which match to your selection. That will save you a lot of scrolling when you have to set an item type.

The "Display As" select list for a report column is missing the handy quick pick links to quickly set one of the common display types. This feature is available for the "Display As" of page items, but not available for report columns.

The Plugin adds links for the most common display types.

One of the drawbacks of web applications compared to rich client applications is that most of the time they lack keyboard shortcut support. How often have you scrolled up to the "Apply changes" or the "Run Page" button instead of just pressing a key?
 
The Plugin adds keyboard shortcuts for common operations, but it also gives you the infrastructure to add you own shortcuts.

Use F10 to "Apply Changes", F8 to "Run page" or Ctrl+Left/Right to go to the next page/item/column, ...

With the "Set" feature you get a very powerful feature into your hands!
 
The Plugin adds on each page a new select list which allows you to add your own actions. For example: Are you always manually setting multiple properties when you define a Page Item as Date Picker? The new "Set" feature will do that for you with just a single click! That can dramatically speed up your development and it's an easy way to standardise the properties for different item types. See the video for details.

Have you ever accidentally modified your application on the production- or test system, because you thought you are on the development system?
 
The Plugin gives you the infrastructure that you can add a background image or change the colors, depending on the system you are logged in. Never change the application on the wrong system again!

The ApexLib Development Framework give you lot of possibilities to tweak and enhance your Oracle APEX application. But it can be hard to remember all the "hints" you have to use in the comment field to influence the behaviour of the framework.
 
That's why the Plugin adds a new "ApexLib" section to the Oracle APEX Builder, which allow you to declaratively set the properties, like you are used to from the other properties of Oracle APEX.

The Plugin allows you to decide which features should be enabled or not. If you just want the resizable textareas, go for it! You don't have to "buy" all the other features, which you may find disturbing.
 
By default, all features of the Plugin are enabled.