It's
pretty tricky to align objects on different cases or on different tabs. It
would be nice if clicking the tabs or the case select didn't deselect the first
control. The originally selected control could appear in a dotted outline.
Not deselecting objects when switching tabs would, in my opinion, be a usability nightmare. I often have controls on different tabs lined vertically, so if I had something selected on another tab, even if the marching ants somehow "bled through", it would be ambiguous what was selected. Not showing the ants at all would often lead to me doing actions on a control I didn't intend to affect.
I realize that alignment issues exist, but I don't think persisting selection is the way to solve it.
The problems it could cause kind of remind me of what happens if you unknowling have multiple sheets selected in Excel when you edit a cell. Suddenly not only the cell you are looking at has changed, but also the same cell in all the other sheets. I've seen important spreadsheets at work messed up when people somehow at multiple sheets selected.
I think if you want to align objects on multiple tabs, you'd create an off tab object at the desired location and move your objects on each tab to be aligned with that.
> I think if you want to align objects on multiple tabs, you'd create an off tab object at the desired location and move your objects on each tab to be aligned with that.
I sometimes use a temporary floating decoration (such as an arrow). Works well enough.
Both of those are terrible workarounds, and I do see the original idea's value in the LV tab control supporting this case better. But these terrible workarounds are more the direction I would look for a solution than the selction solution.
Property nodes! Granted, it gets away from the ease of placing things graphically, but it's as precise as you want to be. Positions can be relative to the tab they're in by offsetting them like this:
You can also set the bounds property if you want to size the objects.
I gave KUDOs for the idea, because this issue needs attention, IMO.
I am not sure about the "marching ants" 😄 because of overlapping (thanks AristosQueue).
I do not prefer the tab-external-object solution, because one is unable to set a certain object to fix on the plane. The aligning commands move and align the selected floating objects around their common arithmetical center-of-mass.
But I would like to give KUDOs for RodSwift2005's idea. Once aligned, I disable the code and never run it again hopefull -- until redesigning the FP.
