Created attachment 202139 [details]
Sample

The Navigator shows the object as grouped and the selection frame expands to the outer edges, both are common for grouped objects. 

Of course it happens that you don't know for sure whether you are within a group or left it. More information might solve this problem but are for sure annoying in many other situations.

Similarly, leaving the group more easily, ie. single click outside the area, immediately resolves the issue but wouldn't be welcome at all. If you want this, you may customize the command "Exit All Groups" to be run on escape, for example.

=> NAB

Created attachment 202173 [details]
Office 365

This matches more my expectations. Including access to objects within group without explicitly entering.

a) Activation: MSO activates objects with single click: the first click selects the group, the second individual objects. Single click elsewhere exits the group. 
b) Group visualization: The group indicator is always visible. 
c) Object visualization: Selected objects are not only indicated with (larger) dots but also a frame.
d) Interaction: Multi-selection of objects within a group is possible but there is no sub-grouping (and ungroup applies to and dissolves the whole group).

In order to make a) single click activation and deactivation possible we need this extra rotation widget (yet I see no way for sheering in PowerPoint). I like b) and c) a lot (for sure requested somewhere and out of topic here), and we are more flexible regarding d).

Background for this bug are bug 34438, bug 34438 comment 48 and bug 167593. Sure, the request here is useful outside that specific case. However I see it as kind of pre-requisite for caption frames. There is also the bug 34438 comment 48 hurdle, which  should be done first, if you ask me (in the ideal world)

IMHO it's one big tender item, with sub-goals. Making it quite big project. Or everything needs to be split in pieces, done one by one.

We discussed the topic in the design meeting.

The MSO way of interaction is activation/deactivation per single click with an additional widget on top to rotate. While this nifty little thing is desirable as the slow double click we require is impossible to figure without reading the manual, changing the interaction in such a drastic way might not be wanted by our users. And in some scenarios our approach is better, too.

However, indicating the group is valuable, if not necessary, as unselecting an object still keeps the group editing active, which makes the Navigator useless for this purpose. What we do, however, is to dim the other objects. Maybe not obvious enough.

Two solutions come in mind:

* make the dim effect stronger
* keep the object selection indicator (these blue rectangles on the edges) after entering the group but change the color to grey or make it a small dot, etc.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #6)
> * make the dim effect stronger

Not discounting this, but note that this will only work when there are objects outside the group (which is usually the case).

> * keep the object selection indicator (these blue rectangles on the edges)
> after entering the group but change the color to grey or make it a small
> dot, etc.

When I select the group, I see 8 orange squares, not blue rectangles; or are we not talking about the same thing?

Also, making it a dot is not so great, because square-vs-dot, or square-vs-small-disc, currently symbolizes movement vs rotation, and it's nice that we have that semantic. The semantic "pun" of indicating being in a group would ruin that and be confusing IMNSHO.

Making it gray is better; but we could also draw the bounding rectangle in gray and with dashes, or something.


And, of course, we could do more than one thing at the same time, e.g dim + draw bounding box etc.

Also - IIANM, we've had this since OpenOffice days.

Created attachment 202446 [details]
Illustration of the proposal