EricGD

Yes, this is very annoying and needs to have the option to be disabled. I find it the worst when using a graphic tablet as using the hotkeys on the pen make this issue even more of a nuisance.

Click on the very top layer/artboard then shift click the one on the very bottom, this will instantly select every object then you can apply the same color, stroke, effect, or gradient to all of them.

You can already do that, just select multiple objects at the same time and you can apply any of those changes to all of the selected items at once.

What sort of improvements are being made for the vector crop tool? I'm hoping it would be possible to treat the cropping box like a shape, with the ability to change it's rotation, shape, curve, etc...

For some reason there isn't any way to create an arc on an entire shape in Affinity Designer without selecting every node link one by one and changing the curve. If something similar to the Effect>Warp>Arc option in Adobe Illustrator could be implemented in the future that would be great.