Object Selection Frustrations

Question

I am experiencing the following, very frustrating,
usabilities issues relating to object selection:
1) More often than not when I click on an object in the slide
editing pane in order to select it, I end up moving or resizing it
slightly. This is quickly and easily undone with a Ctrl-Z (Undo),
but it costs me time and mental energy assessing whether or not
this has occurred. Is there a technique for selecting an object
that guarantees that the object won't be modified in any way?
2) In this scenario I have select an object B ('b' for back)
in the timeline pane that is behind another object F ('f' for
front), and I want to modify (move, resize) B in the slide editing
pane. The object B displays in the slide editing pane as though it
is selected (i.e. resize handles), but if I then click on object B
to interact with it, object F >>always<< gets selected.
3) In this scenario I have selected an object in the timeline
pane, and I then want to move it a small amount using, say, the
down arrow. Even though the object appears as selected in the slide
eding pane, pressing the down arrow acts on the >>timeline
pane<< (which still has focus). I have to explicitly click on
the object in the slide editing pane before being able to use the
down arrow to move it. This clicking to select invariably modifies
the object in some unintended manner, as described in scenario 1
above.
I hope there are easy answers to the above issues, as they
are severely impacting on my enjoyment of using the product, and my
productivity.

Answer 1

Thanks for the feedback Rick. I am indeed using Captivate 1.
Re. Issues 1 & 3
Right-clicking on an object in the slide editing pane brings
up the context menu, which I have no need for in the scenarios
described above, however it does appear that I can then safely left
click anywhere on the object to complete the selection process
without disturbing the object in any way.
So a right mouse click followed by a left mouse click
resolves my issues 1 and 3 above. That's non-intuitive, two mouse
clicks instead of just one, but, in the end, achieves the
objective.
Re. Issue 2
Dragging the object up the timeline does indeed resolve the
issue. Again, non-intuitive (since the slide editing pane visually
indicates that the object is selected), more work than necessary,
but achieves the objective.
Regarding the moving of objects up and down the timeline - I
have encountered a fair bit of frustration with this too. Often
times the selected object will refuse to move up or down and I end
up selecting and reselecting it multiple times until it does
eventually behave. Is there any particular trick involved here too.
P.S. Do you trainers not regularly observe trainees
struggling with these basic object selection/manipulation issues?
Haven't these difficulties been reported to eHelp/Adobe over the
years? I would like to think that I am not the 'least common
denominator' when it comes to using software, given that I am a
technical writer who has worked in the software engineering field
for 15 years now.