I think the heavy usage of A-“Deselect” in blender origins in the slightly non standard selection behaviour. Most DCC apps have a box selection as default and whitespace click clears the selection, this works rather well. We all know it from the operating system, works just the same.But blender just doesnt follow this for whatever reason - so users are accustomed to just additivly select and press the A button to deselect.
Personally I find the whole approach not the best, I can live with it but would rather let go of it. Alt-A for select all in combination with whitespace click -> clear selection would proabably my prefered solution.
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But, honestly, have you reeeally tried to adapt to the new behaviour? As in patiently trying it out for, say, an hour or two? Of course it can be frustrating at first. After 8 years using blender (and only blender as far as 3d goes) I adapted to the new behaviour rather quickly. I use 2.79 every day at my job and then 2.8 for an hour or two at my home trying it out in simple personal projects. I’m having a harder time every day going back to 2.79 shortcuts than 2.8 now. Imo, If one can learn different softwares, one can learn new shortcuts. It requierees patience.
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Don’t get my wrong. I’m really used to using A for both, and I would prefer it to stay that way. But I know I can adapt.
Question though, what is the ‘standard’ select keys for Linux and Mac?
On windows it’s ‘Ctrl+A’ for select, and there is no ‘deselect’ except a mouse click.
If they want something truly standard, why doesn’t blender follow whatever the current OS uses as select, and come up with something for deselect (Like…hmmm… a toggle!?) That would seem to benefit muscle memory far more…
I think muscle memory of a user base is good to consider, but should always be challenged or you lose the possibility to improve. I’m glad the devs try new things and I enjoy watching the process and discussions here.
Separating the function of select all and deselect all does seem like it solves some problems. ex. Pressing a key where you don’t _always_know if you’re selecting or de-selecting isn’t really great. This is compounded with new users.
I’ve been giving it a run while animating some scenes, my main problem is it takes two fingers…
I’ve been paying attention, and definitely perform deselect more often than select all. Having to have my thumb engaged feels like it’s slowing me down. Granted my muscle memory is in the way still-- I think I’ve tried it enough to dislike it. I agree the single press A would be best as deselect, but it does feel like it goes against logic and common sense…
Overall if A select/deselect is being challenged I have to agree with @kio
Lol true, im feeling weird with the new Alt+A to deselect All, i’ve checked on shortcut prefs, it was there, A to select and deselect, but still contra i think, when I press A, it’s select All, and A again it’s still select All, even i have set A to deselect All
In Blender 2.7, A and again A pattern is not unique.
ex. 5 that toggle perspective / ortho
ex. 0 that toggle camera / last view
ex. F11 that toggle last render / current window
ex. O that toggle proportional / standard
ex. Z that toggle wireframe / solid
ex. …more for sure…
The same request should apply to all those keys (even if I know that some of them will be removed in 2.8…) ?
I think that the key repetition that toggle a state:
- easy to remember, one key, double chocolate
- low mental workload
- easy to correct (a fraction of second to press again the key if you mean the opposite…)
I would like to keep this behavior,
have a nice day
Riccardo
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“A” is not the best but “ALT+A” is worse (the solution must be as fast as possible (we can sacrifice little logic)
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In his livestreams Pablo mentioned a few times that they will probably bring back the old behaviour of the a-key or replace it with a simpler solution. I think the old behaviour worked quite nicely - pressing a key twice is just like a double-click with the mouse - it doesn’t require any extra thought once familiar with the behaviour. I personally hope the developers bring the old behaviour for the a-key back soon, but if not I too would prefer having the current 2.8 behaviour switched and the a-key as the deselect option and alt-a as the select option, even though to be honest this is rather unintuitive and is only justifiable because deselect-all indeed is the option that is used more often, as is also suggested by the results of your poll.
the reason that you can’t just click outside of an object to deselect is that it would deselect everything even in cases where you just accidentally clicked outside of your object or not close enough on an element. Because of the great undo-system in blender which fortunately stores the previous selection-state at least for meshes, you might not have lost your selection (as happens in some other apps like inkscape), but even so, blenders clever selection-methods keep you from accidental de-selections in the first place. Also how would you deselect all when you are currently zoomed very far in onto a mesh area? Zooming out just to clear the selection would seem rather hindering. I didn’t mean to criticize, just wanted to let you know what went into the thought-process of the current behaviour - as mentioned in one of the earlier podcasts - I think it was the one of Campbell Barton a few years ago, but might be wrong about that entirely… cheers
…in fact the poll is 62% “A” to both 
I simply suggest to invert the behaviour: first A press will deselect all instead of select all.
Same keys but inverted.
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Yeahm, just invert it! will behave the same and it dont challenge any logic, will be just more comfortable.
@brecht
What I meant is that deselect-all is used more often than select-all in a general workflow. I didn’t mean it’s the first result in the poll. I could have been more clear, though…
Wouldn’t inverting the behaviour of A-toggle result in the same issues, that the change to Alt-A was introduced in the first place? Weather you will select- or deselect-all, will still depend on your current selection state? I think it’s not a big deal and as RiccardoGagliarducci showed above there are many more examples in blender of a ‘toggle-workflow’. In fact I think users are always aware of their current selection state. So it’s perfectly predictable to them what pressing A or A-twice will do. Thus of cause I would argue to bring back A-toggle-workflow in whatever order, but best leave it as it was, as it will otherwise only annoy the old user-base and doesn’t really make any difference either way. But if bringing back the A-toggle behaviour doesn’t seem like a valid option to the developers, reverting the current 2.8 behaviour of A and Alt-A as implied by the original post seems to me the better option, based on the use of both actions in a routine-workflow, even though I still think it would be a bad compromise speed-wise compared to the old behaviour.
in my vision the switch A Select all / A Deselect all can coexisti with alt + A deselect all
this solution would not overturn the traditional use and in addition having the opportunity when there are heavy model having it available we use alt + A to deselect all
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This is a great solution. I’ll probably change my keymap to reflect this if it isn’t done as part of the official release keymap.
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Although it is difficult to adapt to this change for me, I think it makes sense if you take into account what you said and also the fact that with the new keyboard shortcuts you can be absolutely sure that everything has been deselected or selected in a single step without having to see the screen.
From my point of view, single A for selection and deselection was fine, having alt+A only makes it less efficient.
specially because its a combined shortcut.
Honestly, I wouldnt care but that new orange outline is too thick and anoying and I will need to deselect the models all the time in order to see it properly.
There is an experimental patch by Campbell that I suppose Blender institute artists are testing. This coexists with the current Alt+A behavior but as an alternative it also uses two quick presses of key A to deselect.
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That would work wonderfully!
Apparently it is on track and it is close to being included in 2.8:
https://developer.blender.org/D3640
Please do not comment on that entry that is for developers and reviewers.