Show element frames

[mac_heibu]

May be, I am confused at the moment …

Is there a way to show the bounding boxes (frames) of elements like rectangles images, …, when they are not selected – just as it is possible for text frames or empty picture frames?

 

[MEB]

Hi mac_heibu,
No, there's no way to display the bounding box for other objects.

[mac_heibu]

Ups! And if a rectangle is white or transparent, we can‘t find it visually on the page?

[MEB]

You can always select it in the Layers panel. Publisher doesn't have an Outline View mode as Designer.

[Kai Rübsamen]

Hm, InDesign shows such frames in the color of the layer. Assume there are many pages with several objects on the page, it is not suitable to identify such elements in the layers panel.

How should we identify empty frames?

How should we layout something, if we cannot see the frame edges? It seems no good habit to give everything a fill color and remove that later.

[Michail]

The search effort for such elements in the Layers panel is not very large, because the displayed layers always refer to the current page. How often and for what purpose do you use objects without fill and contour attributes?!

Nevertheless, the cursor should signal when it is over such an element.

By the way: I always press Ctrl+A to find out if there are invisible elements on a page

[carl123]

2 hours ago, Kai Rübsamen said:

How should we layout something, if we cannot see the frame edges

If Snapping is enable and Show Snapping Candidates is on then you should be able to "see" the invisible elements on the page so you can layout stuff as desired.

Snapping can be switched on/off with the ; key (on Windows)

[Kai Rübsamen]

This snapping works. How often do I use elements with no attributes: I never do use attributes at a first glance. Cause a visible bounding box is a basic element in InDesign since version 1.0, I’m wondering why such basic things are not possible (also why have guides no flexible colors or bleeds are simply grey). To select everything with cmd+A or hover over regions, where a element might be … really?

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Kai Rübsamen said:

I never do use attributes at a first glance.

I'm curious about that, probably due to my lack of experience. Why are you usually creating shapes (rectangles, circles, etc.) without stroke or fill? What use are they when they're invisible?

[fde101]

13 hours ago, Kai Rübsamen said:

not suitable to identify such elements

When you select them in the layers palette they are selected on the page, which results in handles and possibly an outline to show where they are.

If you really work this way often you might want to name the layers as you go to make them easier to identify.

[mac_heibu]

Why looking for excuses? Never met a layout/graphics application, which hasn’t an option to identify every(!) element on the canvas at one glance without taking further actions (select all, Layers panel, …).

No problem, if it isn’t built in for now. But it is an important feature to consider in future releases.

[Michail]

51 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

Why looking for excuses? Never met a layout/graphics application, which hasn’t an option to identify every(!) element on the canvas at one glance without taking further actions (select all, Layers panel, …).

No problem, if it isn’t built in for now. But it is an important feature to consider in future releases.

The contributions are not excuses, but attempts to help you.
What you want has become clear, and hopefully it has reached the right people

[mac_heibu]

You are right, @Michail!

I should have said „workarounds“ instead of“excuses“. Blame it to my suboptimal English knowledge!

[Kai Rübsamen]

10 hours ago, fde101 said:

When you select them in the layers palette they are selected on the page, which results in handles and possibly an outline to show where they are.

If you really work this way often you might want to name the layers as you go to make them easier to identify.

That’s the point. Assume you have 20 frames and they are all named (Rectangle) it would not be possible to select the right one. So renaming everything would be helpful, but also time consuming.

What is the purpose of creating frames and giving them no fill or stroke? Well, I didn’t say, that I would give them later such attributes or maybe put a picture in them, but I do not want to be limited with the standard-formatting (e.g. a light grey for everything).

In my opinion it should work as in InDesign:

1. Normal or layout mode: You see invisibles (white space characters), guides, bounding boxes of every frames

2. Preview Mode: You see your final result that would be printed, without invisibles, guides and bounding boxes

As mac_heibu described, this is what we learned 10 or 15 years from other layout programs.

Allthough it is good, not to clone everything from other programs, this is something that I expect as InDesign-Trainer with experience of 20 years how visibilty of elements should work in Publisher too. It seems no good habit to me, to identify something in the layers panel or rename 20 frames to identify later one ;-).

In the end, people would not move from InDesign to Publisher or even start with Publisher as their first app, if there is a another new cool feature, but think of usability and handling. Just my 2 cent, but displaying frame edges, colorizing guides, moving guides to a layer and distinguish between horizontal or vertical guides, magnetical columns guides, these are things that are pretty done in InDesign and hopefully come to Publisher as well.

[fde101]

On 10/30/2018 at 7:26 AM, Kai Rübsamen said:

InDesign shows such frames in the color of the layer

As does QuarkXPress; Affinity Publisher doesn't support that type of layer yet but crossing fingers they will also do this when support for global layers gets added later on.

 

22 hours ago, Michail said:

How often and for what purpose do you use objects without fill and contour attributes?!

This is what has me puzzled too.  I can see that for text and graphics frames that are serving as placeholders for other content, but those frames can be visible already.  For non-content objects what purpose do they serve if they are not visible?  Just create them when they are needed then this concern goes away.

 

21 minutes ago, Kai Rübsamen said:

maybe put a picture in them

Empty picture frames do have a visible frame, as do text frames (when Show Text Flow is enabled in the View menu).  You could try converting the rectangles to picture frames to make them visible, but it doesn't look like you can convert them back (which seems to me to be an omission).

[mac_heibu]

Just look at this example, and you may see, that missing frame edges may lead to faulty layouts and prints:

 

[Michail]

55 minutes ago, Kai Rübsamen said:

2. Preview Mode: You see your final result that would be printed, without invisibles, guides and bounding boxes

Use Ctrl+Shift+W

[Michail]

19 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

Just look at this example, and you may see, that missing frame edges may lead to faulty layouts and prints:

This is a bad example because this cannot happen with frames without fill and contour attributes!

[fde101]

4 minutes ago, Michail said:

bad example

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).

[mac_heibu]

Really can‘t understand these arguments. Perhaps I want no transparent box for different reasons (coloured background for example), then these minimal crops can happen very easy — especially if you are un a hurry And this may happen as well, if such a frame slightly overlaps another image frame.

And above all: Why introducing such layout pitfalls for unexperienced users or for users, who are in a hurry?

I think, I have to revert my opinion from „workaround“ to „excuses“.

But forget this thread. If you think it is ok, it may be so. I am free, to use the app, or not. I bet, you‘d change your mind, if you ever create and set a 160 + page magazine under heavy time pressure …

[Michail]

@mac_heibu
Once again: You are free to wish for missing functions, and I support it!
Only your example was a bit unfortunate.

[fde101]

Agreed.

I'm not arguing that supporting the display of those frames as an option would be a bad or even undesirable thing, just trying to point out some alternatives and other ways of approaching tasks that are less impacted by the fact that it is not available now.

[Medical Officer Bones]

Create a picture frame, place a cut-out image (PNG) in it with a transparent background. Double-click the image to decide on a crop.

Result: invisible frame borders make it impossible to move the subject in relation to the borders without trial and error.

If this is intended behaviour and no option exists to display the invisible bounding box other than forcing matters by applying an actual border stroke, I would tag this as missing functionality, and possibly a workflow killer.

Let's hope the developers realize that this is a 'somewhat' odd missing option, and will see the error of their ways, or perhaps they just haven't gotten around to add this view option. We're still talking beta here, so...

[Old Bruce]

13 minutes ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

Create a picture frame, place a cut-out image (PNG) in it with a transparent background. Double-click the image to decide on a crop.

Result: invisible frame borders make it impossible to move the subject in relation to the borders without trial and error.

I am not seeing this sort of behaviour I can see the PNG outlined in blue I can see the frames Borders in blue too. Try to single tap to get the frames borders.

[Medical Officer Bones]

30 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I am not seeing this sort of behaviour I can see the PNG outlined in blue I can see the frames Borders in blue too. Try to single tap to get the frames borders.