wlk

Not sure now, where are u going with this and how it is related to the topic... And yes, of course it is! Thats when you choose if the content is linked or not. One change in source file reflects immediately on all instances through entire publication, that's the point right? Ok, now I see. Painting/drawing nice and lovely designs - yeah, who cares about invisible object. And why would we? All the tips'n'tricks and workarounds above do well. You can do a pretty magazine with lovely pictures, but that's only the half of the job. The other half is doing a precise DTP, heavy content pages, where you can't afford even a smallest error, that's where are we now.. Hey, its a Publisher. A DTP software. Before planning and organising the work goes a decision part - is it even possible? And I love the freedom of physical paper and ink

Yeah, this is cool. Getting closer. But not really there, considering linked content. And a lot of linked content...

If you're fine with it and it works for you, that's great. For me, due to amount of objects - not a chance.

Thanks for the tips loukash, but I'm afraid option #1 has been discussed a few times here in the posts above, and not recognised as a solution. The problem is obvious - select all shows the objects, but when you select one, others disappear. I would call #1 as a "temporary location preview". Or a mind game like: select all, choose one, and remember where the other are. Bad guess? Try again - select all, choose one... and again. It's more of a "loop" or "going round in circles" than a workaround and definitely not a workflow. Really not. It's about editing, arranging, moving, scaling, not previewing. #2 Could be workaround, I do that sometimes. But we can agree that it really does not go well with the readability or the design itself and the small object also coud be lost. Turning it on and off again is not a workflow.

Sure they are visible on top of something dark, not sure what you mean. We are talking about the frame edges of "white filled" objects (that are not on colored backgound) and "no stroke/no fill" objects are not visible, so you don't know where they are on the page and/or where they end. And that inevitably lead to a faulty output illustrated in that example. And the other example posted by Medical Officer Bones.

This is the an older one, but since the 1.9.1 is out, just a bit of my view. The straigth visibility of EVERY object on the page should be the essential and a basic feature of any layout/publishing software. The reason is obvious - you need an absolute control of everything on the page to end up with correct and reliable output. The question of this topic has been answered in a first 4 posts - it is not possible (yet). And I have to agree with guys above, the rest are just helping workarounds (and excuses), which are working only partially, but mainly - slow down the workflow significantly. It is not just about creating "empty" or "white" boxes and "why would you need them" (really??). They could be whatever - leftovers from previous designs, versions or while working on a design. That just happens! People do make mistakes and we all work under heavy time pressure, so having a objects on page you can't see is a straight way to hell. Because they allways affect other object on the page. Transparency is a "nice" addition to this. You need to know what are you doing, with what, and where it is. I believe everyone here is on a tight deadlines, so the most important things in our everyday jobs are efficiency, usability and speed, and so is eliminating every possible errors. And this is the right opposite. You just can't be serious here. Could work for something simple, yes. But right now I have some sort of catalogue in front of me, with more than cca 300 objects on the page - "data merge" driven tables, pictures, lines, small vector shapes + dimensions.. etc. (yes I'm in InDesign). Half of them are in white - texts and lines on a colored background and pics. Changing something on back (upon client request) could lead (and it does) to a massive ammount of invisible objects on a (white) page. There is no way to handle them because I can't see them. Trying to locate them in the layer panel, Ctrl/Cmd + A, delete them all and start over, create temporary colored box under? Switch to Designer? There's no time to play games here.... Many uses for them. They are here to help you, not to be printed (or visible in final design). Depends what are you working on. It can be done in different ways but speed and efficiency is the key. Maybe for creating an independent (and/or weird) text wrap objects - draw a shape, set text wrap, lock it and forget - then just run text box over. Or the opposite - having a clear space around the object - draw a mad or exact shape you need around, group it and move around freely and it will keep the area around clear. Or as a little complicated spacer - draw a shape and lay and snap the other objects around. Or a simple spacer to help you arrange objects. Or when constructing and applying crazy layouts - even with sophisticated guides, grids and measures you can't do everything. Just draw a few boxes and shapes representing the layout and snap objects to them. Then pull some guides and delete them or keep them to copy and paste to transfer layout across different documents. Or sometimes we put empty or white boxes on the page, so in the workflow sw is not ignoring and skipping empty pages. .... It's an even worse example considering that it is a text frame and you can turn on visible frames for those (Show Text Flow in the View menu). No, that example is very accurate indeed. Also white filled objects are not visible.

Yes, since the very very old times, the Alt key allows panning no matter what’s selected or active, even in InDesign (when in text frame). The spacebar is commonly used as pan tool and makes sense, unless you work with the text, then you are just adding spaces... In affinity the middle mouse does the job (mouse wheel click) without touching any key.