Thank you, Wayne, for the hint. I personally find it clearer in Blender 2.8 and “Spacebar” is also the hotkey for starting a video in many video players. Also, deselecting with ALT + A avoids possibly selecting a whole bunch of objects if you just want to be sure that nothing is selected. There seem to be a lot less shortkeys now in Blender 2.8 but it’s more than equalized by the cleaner structure.
