Question

I’ve had this problem several times now, and never found a satisfactory solution: If I want to move a group of items with a view all together in Interface Builder, and these items are all on top of a larger background item, I can’t put a selection rectangle around the items in the view because any click and drag in the view initiates a move of the background item. In other words, every pixel in the area I’m interested in (and nearby) has a “hand” mouse pointer, no “arrow” pointer is available so I can’t drag out a rectangle selection box.

cmd-clicking individual items to build up the group only works when they are separate, and only when there are a few of them. Sometimes I want to select a “pile” of items all on top of each other.

Is there some way to “select for moving” by clicking in the .xib item list? Double clicking a single item selects it for moving in the view, but I have’t found a way to add to the “select for moving” selection this way.

So far the best way I’ve found is temporarily moving the background out of the way and then putting it back but this is unsatisfactory, and wouldn’t work with a more complex background arrangement.

How have others done this?

Answer 1

I know what you mean, and I have found a slightly better solution: go to the list view and…

1. drag either the background view or your custom view up to the root hierarchy level (adjacent to File’s Owner)
2. double click on your custom view and edit away using drag-box-selection
3. when finished, drag the view back into its original hierarchy position

The key here is that the GUI editor only edits one root object at a time, so moving the background vs. ‘foreground’ views into separate root objects allows you to edit them separately. Woo!