Drag select in wire frame view

[Christopher25321881xb6a]

Can we go back to the days of yore when you could drag select items in wire-frame view and ONLY select those items and NOT the shape behind them? 

For instance, I have a few lines of text or shapes over an image or a large flood color within a group. I want to use wire-frame and drag-select those items without selecting the image. 
Way back when, and I mean going back to something like Illustrator 6 or 8, this was a thing you could do.

At some point, someone decided that was a silly thing that NO ONE does, apparently and made it so that even in wire-frame, the image or shape is still selected. So now I have to click, drag, select, then go back to full view and shift-deselect the flood/image.

After all these years, I'm used to it, but since I happened to be here I thought I'd mention it.

[Abhishek Rao]

Greetings @Christopher25321881xb6a,

I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. I have tested this functionality on my end using versions 29.8.2 and 30.0, and both operate identically in Outline mode. When you utilize the Selection tool and create a marquee that solely encompasses the center point of the object you wish to select, Illustrator should only highlight that specific object. If the marquee captures the center points of several items, Illustrator will select all those whose center points are within the marquee.

If your experience is different, providing a brief screen recording of your workflow would greatly assist me in understanding what is occurring on your system. You might also consider manually resetting your Illustrator preferences and testing the functionality again. Ref: https://adobe.ly/3LP3lT5 and this video may also be beneficial https://adobe.ly/4i7Q6c9

Please share your observations, so I can investigate further.

Abhishek

[Christopher25321881xb6a]

See attached. The red and black background is a a simple blend fill. 

[Abhishek Rao]

Hello @Christopher25321881xb6a,

I appreciate you sharing the video. Based on my observations, the behavior seems to be linked to the intricacy of the artwork, where the marquee intersects the center points of several objects in the blend, causing Illustrator to select them as anticipated in Outline mode. To further investigate this, please attempt the same marquee selection in a new Illustrator document that includes only a few simple objects and see if the selection functions correctly there. This will assist us in determining whether the problem is specific to the file or part of a larger issue.

For additional information on how Illustrator manages Outline mode and object centers, you can also check out this help article: https://adobe.ly/3XahbC8

Once you have had the opportunity to test it, please inform me of your findings.

Abhishek

[Christopher25321881xb6a]

You are correct. Using only simple filled shapes, it does NOT select these items. It does seem to be only certain files, but I'm not sure what about those files makes it NOT work as expected. I've had it select blends, embedded images, etc. even though I am NOT selcting a center or corner point or edge.

I'll just point out again, that this is nothing new and I've experienced it on multiple machines at mutiple work places.