Resizing shapes--any way to force handle selection?

[georgek37401698]

A lot of my grunt work making figures involves resizing shapes, and often rectangles.

I use a Wacom tablet and I find that unless I zoom in closely, choosing the center point on a size to change the length of a rectangle can be hit or miss. 

As I hover the pen, I'll get the opposing arrow cursor, indicating I about to change object length; but then when I go to actually click it, it will change to a corner point, or to move the entire shape, or even rotate.

Again, zooming in can help avoid this issue, but it would be great if there were a keyboard trick to forcing the object width/length to change, kind of like holding down shift forces a proportional size change.

Is there a way to do this? 

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

You could try if assigning a keyboard shortcut for View > Show/Hide Corner Widget helps.