Problem
Currently, when multiple objects of the same style are selected you can apply extra formatting to them - but you can’t then Save as a new style: you are forced to select one object, create a new style and then reselect the original selection and apply the new style. For complicated selections a great inconvenience!
Idea
If all selected items have the same style + extra formatting, allow creation of a new style and apply this to all objects.
Benefits
- Ease of use
- More FileMakery
- Greater productivity
Use Case
- See Problem above
See also Show red triangle in Inspector Styles tab while multiple objects selected
I obviously see why you would want this, but I'm afraid that this might add a performance hit each time you save as a new style (since FM needs to loop through all attributes on all objects selected to check whether they can indeed all be saved as a single style). Given that FM already in some cases (for some people) starts spinning when you do a lot of work in layout mode, I'd be very hesitant to ask for this.
Maybe we should have "Saved selections" in layout mode, sort of like "Save finds"? Provided that selections only get saved when you explicitly save them, that shouldn't be a big performance hit (just a list of object ids to store). You could then "Restore selection" and set the Style for all those objects (if they're of the same object type).