Here's what correct behavior might look like. Only I'm suggesting we do the opposite: from left to right - touch selection, and from right to left - full frame hit. Top down or bottom up, it doesn't matter. And be sure to have different style frames. And don't forget to add an option to disable the feature in the settings.

P.S. There is no need to change the behavior of the 'Alt' key.

Great implementation! For those who work with montages of repeated elements, a similar function is essential! I can't wait to try it

WOW! Thanks for the update. You must understand when, and I do presume to speak for the community, I say we'll believe it when we see it.

However, contrary to the specific suggestion here: Please make this a PERSISTENT selection mode we can activate, not a clumsy hotkey- or direction-based option we have to do every. damned. time.

AI lacking this crucial feature just makes me angry.

This is such a crucial feature for efficiency I can't understand how its not been implemented yet. Mind blowing.

Illustrator is abandonware. You should simply pirate it, since it's unsupported.

i wanted (and asked) this in 2006, hehe
they will never implement it

Granted, programs like AutoCAD are super clunky and outdated, but Adobe could learn a ton from them. There are a lot of quality-of-life features like this missing from Ai.

Sure Ai should have it.

Meanwhile, there is Super Marquee Tool from the AstuteGraphics plugin pack that allows to do exactly that and much more. If you need this right here and now, I suggest trying this solution.

@Szasz-Fabian Jozsef it's like talking to deaf and blind people, there is no hope in Adobe.

Selecting objects that are touched by the selection marquee is extremely dumb. I don't know why Illsutrator, inDesign and other Adobe software designers find useful to selected EVERYTHING that is touched.
Please learn from Corel or CAD applications - the user must be able to select objects that are INSIDE the selection marquee.
In order to select some objects in Illustrator or inDesign, the user has to make all kind of tricks and has to struggle every day, because the selection method is too simple and dumb.
Why is so dumb? Because it allows only one way - drag a selection marquee. Take this example from Corel:
- Simple selecting selects objects inside the marquee
- Alt-selecting selects objects touched by the marquee
- Starting the selection with Alt and finishing without Alt selects the objects inside the marquee, WITHOUT moving the object that is under the cursor where the selection marquee started
- Alt-clicking allows to select the objects BEHIND the topmost object.
Adobe products know only the fraction of the features mentioned above, therefore has the worse UX when selecting.

Dear Adobe, it has been years since users have required this feature. Please check this old thread where people have to struggle with plugins or scripting to perform this basic feature. This thread is more than 8 years old.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator/how-to-select-only-objects-within-a-selection-marquee/td-p/3479810/page/4

Yesssss. Please make Illustrator's selection rectangle work like Rhino's.

The main issue for me is that if i shift-box through some elements that i already have selected, instead of adding to the selection, it removes some of the already selected objects (toggle). I wish shift/ctrl would be like any other CAD/graphics program (including photoshop!) where shift=add ctrl=subtract. the toggle is absolutely maddening.

In AutoCAD, 2 selection methods exist, and their functionality depends on the direction you draw the selection box.
1) When you drag the selection box from left to right, only objects entirely within the
window will be selected. This is the same as with the Cool Selection plugin The selection box is a solid line.
2) When you drag the selection box from right to left, objects within and crossing the window will be selected. This is how the actual AI Selection Tool works (although by dragging the selection box to any direction. The selection box is a dashed line.
Option 1 is indeed missing from AI.

It's surprising Illustrator has not adopted what is standard issue across other CAD softwares — AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino 3D. Left-to-right drag only selects objects entirely enclosed inside the selection marquee, right-to-left drag selects all objects crossed and inside the selection marquee.
It becomes second-nature very quickly and would return a lot of time deselecting points and lines as collateral.

@Viktor. This is a life saver! Thank you a lot.
@Adobe, can you learn from it?

There is an Illustrator plugin to do this: https://www.cool-selection.com

So much for Adobe's rental model, which was supposed to fund bug fixes like this.

This has been requested for over a decade.

This is hilarious what Adobe does. Adobe wake up!!! It's time to go to work!