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Currently, the selected components on the form have a thick solid blue line around them, which makes the form look visually corrupted. Suggest to use more de-facto "standard" approach of marking selected components with 8 small boxes in the corners and mids of the lines. Here comes example ascii art picture: o o o x-----------------------x o| OK Button |o x-----------------------x o o o
I don't understand why the current selection "makes the form look visually corrupted". It is IMO more practical than the 8 boxes that hides the selected component, mainly if it is small. It also evokes a notion that the component can be resized which is typically not the case. I have no strong opinion against the 8 boxes, but would like to know what is so great on them.
This is a matter of two things: 1. visual design: how "nice" is the visual artifact percieved 2. interaction design: how well the visual artifact communicates what it needs to communicate I agree that #2 might be atually worse for non-resize layout managers, as it might imply resize behavior. On the other hand, the same argument can be made against the solid line approach where the resizability in Absolute layout is not communicated. In #1, the solid lines introduce a very visible artifacts into the layout that affect, and corrupt the visual perception of the UI. I am arguing that more subtle way of communicating selection would be beneficial, especially in the form designer, where the aesthetical aspect is significant.
We are going to address this for 4.2 with the new layout design support.
Implemented some time ago.