Illustrator CS4 selecting masked content

Question

Congratulations to the Abobe Illustrator team for reinventing the wheel and breaking it.  I'm a 12 year veteran of Adobe Illustrator and a professional vector illustrator. Is it me or is it now more difficult if not impossible to select an deselect objects. Certaily not if they are masked.  Here we have th most findamental task being attempted by the most advanced user and I'm completely helpless.
WHY WHY WHY!  It wasn't broken. You just pulled the rug out from under your professional users to accomodate complaints by newbs.  A total regression.  I'm furious beyond words.

Answer 1

I would argue that these were not issues for power users, and the changes is workflow this introduced create a whole new set of problems.
alignment options now work correctly with clipping masks...
Was this that big of an issue? I just didn't use alignment with masked objects.  It was intuitive enough that it would not work since masked object when selected highlighted the elements outside of the mask.  I'd simply turn on snap to point and leverage guides.  Easy.
you can no
longer mistakenly select a masked object by inadvertently clicking
outside the mask itself...
I'd simply press Command 2 to lock an object or a group of objects if they were in the way.  It's a skill new users will still need if they intent to  drill through to object obscured behind others.
preview mode selections are much cleaner and
easier to see.
I don't know what "preview mode" is.  If you mean the Command Y keyline view I still see the masked vectors.   If you mean the standard view with edges highlighted then I would agree that there are fewer edges to obscrure the design.  But who really critiques their designs with edges on? Command H's and they're gone.
Plus these changes just introduce a whole new set of issues.
For example, my file has a bitmap masked inside a shape that is masksed inside another shape.  What a headache it is to select the bitmap now.  I have to 1.) leave the design environment to drill into "isolation" to make a positioning change. 2.) Come back into the design environment to see how it looks. 3.) return to isolation to tweak it and so on.  Before I could select the elements, hide edges and edit in the design environment.  Much easier, much more intuitive.
I would also argue the program is far less intuitive because it's less of a WYIWYG interface with hidden edges.  You will have to make a concerted effort when looking over someone else files to drill down and understand whats a masked object and what an embedded graphic becuase they will look teh same.  It actually remind me of the way Flash used to allow code burried on objects rather than easily findable on the timeline.  Adobe eventually eliminated this feature because it was a workflow disaster when user picked up other people's files.
So we will have to agree to disagree, but it seems to me these fundamental changes are a nusance to veterans and will ultimately prove unintuitive and confusing to new users as well.  I will simply have to deal with it since I needed a new licence for the studio and thought it would be more economical to buy the latest instead of staying cs3.  But in a way I regret the upgrade and would discourage any other advanced user from upgrading unless they can affort hours of frustration.
Thanks for listening.