Does anyone know of a way to turn off the bounding box which Indesign CS5 draws around a selection of objects? It's driving me nuts as it's nolonger easy to see just what's been selected and what hasn't if other objects appear within the bounding box's frame!
Illustrator has had this feature for a while - and has an option to turn it off. Whither Indesign?
Cheers.
Peter
Progress, eh? One step forwards and half a dozen back!!!!
Sorry, totally misread what you said in the original post. Don't know where I got the idea you were talking about groups. Must be the sleep deprivation.
So no, there's seems to be nothing you can do to turn off the "super bounding box" as you select multiple objects. I have to agree that this is not a change for the good, in general, though it does give you a clue if you've selected somethng off screen.
Yeah - definitely not a change for the good. Or rather, not good since I can't turn it on/off at will. Illustrator's had the same function for ages, but you've always been able to turn it on or off as you need it.
I wonder if it's possible for someone to write a little plugin to add that functionality? Anyone...?
Cheers
Peter
The Transformation Values isn't it. This is a path that appears when you have more than one object selected. It was designed to allow a user to resize multiple objects without having to group them. It's called a bounding box in Illustrator. I don't know what it's call in Indesign. The only thing I know is this option was forced on us users as a convience thing and there are some of us who hate it. Me included. There isn't any way currently to shut it off.
Whoops, didn't see that sorry, have a look at this post here, it doesn't say so although it does show how you can now turn off frame edge highlighting, perhaps ask in the comments there?
BobLevine wrote:
Yes, it can be disabled in 5.5 with a new user preference.
Bob
Bob, are you sure? I know you're still recovering from the weekend and answering by email, so maybe you don't remember that this thread is about the "super" bounding box that gets drawn around multiple selected objects as you click on them.
This thing is still driving me crazy. I desperately need to turn this feature off.
Does anyone know of an extension which is responsible for the Bounding Box I can disable? Or a Plugin I can install which does the trick?
I just can't understand why Adobe doesn't let me turn it off just like in Illustrator. Guess its just very hard to program.
I just want top be able to turn it off, like in Illustrator, as I don't need it every time I work with InDesign. Let's say I want to layout a page of a magazine and I need to copy the upper 2/3 of the page – which contains a few Rectangle/Text Frames and maybe a Picture Frame – as I need to use the exact same layout for another article on the lower 1/3 of the page. However – the upper 2/3 part of the page is never going to fit on the lower 1/3 part without resizing first.
What I did in CS4 was select the items on the upper part, Option-Drag down to copy, adjust the heigt of the frames to make them fit, and – while the items still being selected – move them into place and maybe resize a bit more.
What happens now when I drag to copy the upper Frames I can't resize these items individually, instead all items scale proportionally. I don't need that to happen. And when I drag/copy the upper 2/3 pag down, below the upper article, I have to zoom in and out and go to the next page to be able to grab the lower handles of the Rectangle/Text Frames and resize all items one by one.
Can you explain how to do this in CS5 / 5.5?
I'm not exactly sure why this is an issue?
Move the items onto the lower 1/3 of the page. Select them individually and resize...?
Is it that you want to have them all selected and then resize them individually while all selected?
I don't remember this behaviour being different in CS3 or CS4??? I could be wrong.
Can you post a screen shot or something of the behaviour in Illustrator and InD CS4 and CS5?
I'm having a lot of trouble imagining what this issue is?
Interesting - I don't remember that lol
I guess I'm a go with the flow and whatever is there is what I work with. I didn't even notice Frame Edge Highlighting until pointed out
Interesting inteview with a programmer at Adobe here http://indesignsecrets.com/indesignsecrets-podcast-151.php
In it he explains how they get to 50/50 decisions on how something should work. Or perhaps it was a change they had meant to implement previously but never got around to it.
For instance, it might not have been the intention to allow selected objects to be transformed individually and they may not have gotten it the way they had planned until CS5.
But sometimes programmers have to go with what feels right, as explained in the Podcast interview.
Interesting to note that he does say the main guy actually reads the Wishlist - that was posted above.
So get your voice heard by the programming team boss and add it.
As David points out in the interview, you can't add a switch for everything, sometimes a decision has to be made and sometimes they get it wrong.
I can't see how the bounding box makes it more difficult to tell what is selected. What would you see that you don't see with the bounding box? (OTOH it's pretty easy to give the example of the bounding box showing that you have an invisible and unwanted object selected.) While I don't like a lot of structural things cluttering up the screen the bounding box does make the behaviour more intuitive -- it shows more clearly what is selected for transformation -- and ultimately behaviour should trump appearances.
Studio57NL complains that it is no longer possible to transform individual objects while having multiple objects selected, but I wonder why anyone would need to select multiple objects in order to transform them individually. The fact that the example given has them already selected seems irrelevant. Why would the objects need to stay selected once they have been copied? If they are a group, why aren't they grouped?
(I think in post 35 Bob is either mistaken or worded his thoughts awkwardly.) With the previous behaviour, selected objects could be transformed individually, but needed to be grouped in order to transform as a unit. Current behaviour allows selected objects to be transformed as a unit without grouping, but they can't be transformed individually. Seems a six of one half dozen of the other scenerio, but the current group behaviour is simplified and the Selection tool can now transform elements within a group without switching tools and double clicking, so I think the current behaviour comes out on top.
Me too. It drives me crazy, and I am using CS5.5 for months now. No, I can never adapt to this, because the problem is that when I choose several objects, that bounding box is so distracting, I can not see easily if I got all the objects I wanted. It depends on the layout. On simple pages its OK, but as I often have medium to very complex layouts and often need to choose many objects of different sizes, I can not see if I got them all, until I move them around. It is extremely annoying!
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