Thin blue line around text frame

[Raymondo]

The thin blue line around text frame does not disappear when you click away. It does however disappear if you click on the node tool and click anywhere on the page. This can’t be right. I’m assuming it’s a bug. Also can’t seem to use the gradient function in fx. Won’t allow me to choose colours on gradient bar.

[walt.farrell]

Assuming that you (like I) have View > Show Text Flow selected, then I agree that it's odd that  the text frame goes away when you click somewhere with the Node tool.

However, that may be to ensure that you know the Text Frame is not selected, since clicking on an object with the Node tool selects it and puts a blue frame around it. As the "selected" blue frame and the Text Flow blue frame are visually identical, they may have had no choice except to remove the Text Flow frame.

[Raymondo]

Hi Walt

Well, the thing is both in AP and AD clicking outside the text bounding box with the move tool makes the blue bounding line disappear. That’s just how it should work but in Publisher this doesn’t happen unless you select the node tool so I’m thinking this has to be a bug. You wouldn’t have a different behaviour for the text box In Publisher and have a different behaviour for AP/AD. Hopefully it will be corrected in next update.

[walt.farrell]

Designer and Photo, at least the not-beta versions, don't have Text Frames in the same way that Publisher has. I haven't checked the beta versions.

In Publisher, the visibility of the Text Frames when they're not active/selected is controlled by View > Show Text Flow.

[Raymondo]

Oh! That’s weird Walt I’ve just fired up Publisher, pulled in a text box with text and using the move tool, clicked outside the text box and low and behold the bounding box line now disappears. The “Show text box” is not ticked and was not before. Well I suppose all’s we’ll that ends well I guess. One thing I would ask you Walt, how is the text box any different from AP or AD, I’m not seeing where the difference is at the moment.

[walt.farrell]

Just now, Raymondo said:

One thing I would ask you Walt, how is the text box any different from AP or AD, I’m not seeing where the difference is at the moment.

In Publisher we have a Frame Text tool, which creates an object named a Text Frame. Text Frames have various properties controlled by the Text Frame panel (View > Studio > Text Frame), and the frames can link ("flow") text from one frame to another. (Note, though, that a Text Frame is not completely defined as an object in the same sense that a Picture Frame is an object. Both Text Frames and Picture Frames hold other items (text, pictures) but only the Picture Frame appears as such in the Layers panel, with any picture it contains being a child layer.

In Designer and Photo (current release, or 1.7 beta) we also have a Frame Text tool, which create a kind of frame around the text it holds. But this frame does not have the same kind of controls and properties as the more completely defined Text Frames that Publisher has.

[fde101]

29 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

this frame does not have the same kind of controls and properties as the more completely defined Text Frames that Publisher has

That doesn't mean it is a different type of object, only that Publisher provides access to features of the text frame object that the other programs hide from the user.

[Raymondo]

Walt now I get it.  If you activate preview mode then it acts as AP and AD whereby you can use the move tool to activate and deactivate the blue container line. Fine, as long as I now know I can live with that.