My personal approach is make it working like in the best modeling app Modo. They done it really clever with paint select on click drag, both in edit and object mode and right click drag box select with select through always active. Indeed switch in to lasso worked only on the right click command. That way you had no need to switch anything for selection. As on circle/paint select xray wouldn’t be needed at all.
So, I have this working now in Blender with the help of scripts, but as mentioned above there are downpoints in polygon select mode (center vertex) or having no circle select in object mode (however it works with a script).
I think once this can be done with vanilla Blender all the tasks are full filled. Still I try to make it work with this branch of Blender. I just think, you do not need so many options, as I basically never felt the need when working with Modo. So its mainly about making things work in Blender. I will give more feedback later.
The keymap should be able to get you most of the way there as far as left click circle and right click box/lasso. The rest is mostly select through in edit mode, and maybe some other object and edit mode options which I’m thinking over right now.
Show me a demo of modo or a modo-like blender however you are liking it. I might add something to my own worflow or want to modify the build.
I think best you take a look at the keyboard layout I have done. The right click box works in all areas, 3d, nodes, uv, outliner and is X-Ray in 3D always (however Blender does select through inobject mode anyway) : Dropbox - mykeys.py - Simplify your life
You also need this free add-on: X-Ray Selection Tools - #382 by Cirno - Released Scripts and Themes - Blender Artists Community
PS: In the add-on setting you can disable showing X-Ray, but of course its still the normal X-Ray trickered…
Of course one remaining big problem is, that the polygon selection with X-Ray still works only with the center vertex. Which is actually quite painful to work with. We really need a bit way to choose selection, either within the box or touched.
Quick video to start would be best. Just point me at someone using modo on youtube, doesn’t matter to me. Save me some time.
Ok… I’m not good in that, but I did two where I actually do the same in Modo and Blender. Identical shortcuts and mouse action. You see how much faster and smoother it works in Modo so as it natively works that way:
[Embedded video removed for copyright reasons]
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5ghnpoh2mzc5ir/Modo.mp4?dl=0
Please don’t post any media of proprietary software (see Copyright guidelines for devtalk), thank you.
Clearly my fault, sorry.
@RobertLe
Thanks for the demo, I watched the removed video, link is in my email at least. It helps me confirm what you want to happen with selection, and it’s the same as what I am trying to get. I’d like to start incorporating more circle selection (without select through) for my own workflow the way you did. I’m going to look into making myself a single-click keymap entry that will do circle select when you drag select. I’m not used to right-click dragging, maybe I’ll start doing that as well to have a single keymap assignment for all of it. That or just do some kind of single keypress toggle, I don’t know, doesn’t matter.
Another thing that is nice is the way it will show selected faces (when you did box select) that are otherwise unseen, without going full x-ray. It’s something that was brought up before, had a quick look back then and it didn’t seem like it would be easy for me to figure out. A backburner sort of thing that might happen later.
Functionality-wise though, should be able to get something very close. Even with just the xray tools addon I think you could assign those alternative drag select tools in the keymap to switch between them easier.
I’ll have an update in a week or two for 3.4.
Glad I could help. Modo shows the faces selected on the back, not sure if possible without getting the center vertex in Blender. The center vertex is really a problem when selecting with the box selection tool. I often have to retry or redo. Modo does only select things inside the rectangle, So if a polygon is not fully inside it doesn’t select it. Thats more logical in my opinion then some hard to see point.
Anyway, another thing that Blender could improve is actually the double click mouse behavior. Its actually related, as blender sometimes get confused when doing that. In Modo its double click in edge mode, to select loop, in vertex or polygon mode it does a select linked operation. Just mentioned that, as the X-Ray mode seem to get my shortcuts here a bit confused. Not sure why that happen at all.
Face select with my build you can do by enclose (fully inside the box) touch (anything the box is intersecting) or center dot (the only way regular blender does it). This works with box, lasso, and circle.
The loop vs linked is mostly able to work in the keymap. But having the same double-click do 2 different things would require a custom operator, I think. Should be doable with python, just check for if in edge mode → do loop, else → do linked_pick. Linked pick will do linked under cursor, regular linked will do linked of whatever is already selected. This dinstinction matters less if it is assigned to a double-click. That’s because with a double click, assuming that you are single clicking to select with the same mouse or keyboard button, it will perform the single click operation first, followed by the double click operation.
On the Double Click topic, is this something you could look into for a bit @lcas?
https://developer.blender.org/T94465
Oh and thanks for considering everyone’s input. 
Yeah that looks like the same deal, single click happens, then double. I thought maybe using toggle instead of extend for loop select might help but it doesnt work right, unless you assign it to something where the first single click doesn’t actually select anything. If you don’t need the doubleclick assigned mouse button for anything else, or if you can change it to double right click or something, I guess you could just remove or change the double left click nature of it and it would then work as expected.
As far as changing the way it happens, I don’t know. It would maybe work something like checking the double click speed in userpref, and then not doing any single click operations until after that delay.
Then I would have to reconfigure any double click I have to be a right click as well. That’s not worth it for me over something like this.
And then probably make it 3d view only…? At least this sounds like the best way to do this.
Would that be a small patch or would it be very intrusive to the way Blender works?
It might be a very solid improvement for any double button assignment tbh.
One thing to note, when changing my shortcuts, I mapped context menu from press to click and the box selection from press to click drag.
Which was the big difference. No idea why its not that way by default.
Modo selects only box included
This is quite a limitation then.
Double click
Thee problem of a double clicks, double taps is that such an actions is a timing action, which is a speed breaker in general. As far as timing actions quite contradicts human motorics, they start cause a huge amount of problems during working with messy and dense meshes. Blender avoid using it by default and it is a wise workflow design choice which makes its default setup automatically compatible with editing dense meshes.
Press click drag
Because it caused a massive jamming of a picking actions.
Modo is not limited to box selection, you can change the mode of how you will perform the selection in Rectangle, Lasso, Circle (not paint), Elipse. So its actually even better than Blender here. Its just that most people using rectangle. Like 99% of the cases.
Doing double clicks for my the last 25 years, I’m not thinking its a problem. I mean, that would say that every software that does, Maya, 3dsmax, Modo, C4D is wrong? Not getting your point.
Currently Blender is limited. A. User has first to enable X-Ray mode to get a select through and that even comes with limitation. Blender is far less optimized for modeling than Modo. It does not even has a modeling mirror tool or support SubD in the base mesh, etc. But that doesn’t belong here.
What I really like to ask so, is there a way, to have X-Ray in the future, meaning the transparent mode, without the polygon center vertex? Actually this center vertex is a really stupid idea in my opinion.
I often want to select a polygon in transparent mode without searching the vertex first. I mean putting it together the X-Ray mode should never had to be related to selection or modeling. Its a nice feature to look through faces, an alternative to wireframe, but the rest is just causing troubles to many people.
Not in regular blender, but yeah in my build you can turn off facedots in xray. The reasoning for not being able to turn them off is mostly for single click selection using them. I am a fan of just allowing the user to do what they want, whether it can lead to some temporary confusion (is face mode on? where do I click to select a face?) isn’t my business. Since I’m not a dev, I have the luxury of not needing to worry about that very much.
@1D_Inc thanks for the video, I like that setup
Sure, what I meant is window/crossing - it is only window (inclusive) selection type is shown on your video. It is sensitive to polygon size, while crossing type is not.
Box selection is used mostly in 3dsmax approach which was technically cloned from 2d Autocad in the late 80’s (where it is still beneficial though). For example, in organic 3d the dominance of a box/rectangular selection is quite doubtable because shapes are irregular there.
Yes. Doubleclicks mechanics was cloned from 3dsmax by other software in the late 90’s when it was popularized. Problems occurs during editing objects with complex and dense meshes with lots of visual overlappings. Technically, timing actions always require better motorics and aiming accuracy, it is wise to avoid them in general in order to increase the overall speed and endurance of the process.
Yes. But the limitations are very different from expected in the begining.
It take an extra time after switching to Blender to understand where and how exactly it is limited, because the approach is different and assumes different way of using which provides unexpected but valuable benefits. In general, the system that is presented in Blender is a compressed system that fits a wider range of a possible workflows.
There is no other way to work with irregular topology meshes and objects with inner structures - in any software you have to switch to wire/xray to access and control selection there anyway. This way Select Through mechanics fits only cases with predictable topology/structure, like in Box modeling type with mirror modifier in Creative modeling workflows. For example, In Constructive/Reconstuctive modeling workflows (like editing imported meshes) Select Through mechanics lose its benefits since topology in that cases is not predictable.
However, I am familiar with such kind of a discomfort which I also faced when switched to Blender after a decade of a using 3dsmax, even if I don’t feel it anymore.
Facedots mechanics has a nice example of an unobvious advantage - it allow to directly access inner mesh chunks in complex meshes by picking them.
It provides a mechanics that satisfies a subset of cases that is usually unsatisfied in other software. In opposite, Bash selection (by face area) has its own benefits, for example, in Box modeling, that are mutually exclusive with facedots selection type.
In short, both mechanics are useful but benefits in mutually exclusive cases.
Yeah, but, double click with programmable mouse buttons or macro keys are just like single click buttons. But they do increase the number of single use keys in any setup. I don’t like double clicking a button either, but when setup correctly, you don’t have to double click 
Technically, yes, but it comes with peripheral dependency.
For example, I can use such a solutions for myself (like g300s I personally use because of additional buttons), but I can’t propose it for the studio I work or to the masses.
I am glad that it is in general possible to avoid doubleclicks by design, and such a design was discovered and implemented in Blender instead of cloning solutions that already exist on a software market.
Pretty brave and useful step.
True, true, but for peripherals, it’s nice to have additional buttons that you can actually input (unlike F13-F24) and which you know won’t lead to conflicts. That allows you to circumvent having to go through loops and change the regular keymap just so you can use your peripherals. But let’s not get side-tracked any further.