Creation of a Master 'Exit' Text Key

[kdog3682]

Many times when I am working in a textbox, I'll have to click out of the textbox before I can make changes. This usually involves: 1) click out of the textbox, 2) press v, 3) click the textbox, 4) press the key I want to press (usually T to access the textbox font / style).

I think it would be really handy to have a key that the user can define that skips steps 2) and 3). 

[walt.farrell]

Have you tried the Esc (Escape) key?

[garrettm30]

It might be worth noting that you may have to press escape more than once. For example, if you have some selected text inside a text box, pressing escape once deselects the text and places the insertion point at the end of the text that was selected; a second time removes the insertion point, but still has the text frame selected; and a third time deselects the text frame entirely.

Thank you @kdog3682, as your question has surfaced an area that in my opinion could be improved. My preference would be to remove the behavior of the first escape. I do not see any reason why pressing escape when there is text selected should then move the insertion point to the right of the selected text. If I actually want this behavior, then pressing the right arrow will do just that. On the other hand, removing that behavior can reduce user errors.

Consider the following scenario: the focus is currently inside a text frame (in other words, the text frame is accepting keyboard input as text) and you want to switch to another tool. To do this with a keyboard shortcut, you need to first press escape, and then the keyboard shortcut, such as the V for the move tool. But if you have text selected, you must press escape twice before pressing V; otherwise, you end up just typing a single V somewhere in your text, and you might not even notice it. In this case, one must always consider whether text is selected (which not even be currently in view) to know how many times escape is necessary. Removing the behavior would remove no functionality, as one can accomplish the same with the right arrow if that is what one intends to do.