The PC Mouse A Cool Little Helper

The mouse gives you control over your computer. With the mouse you move the cursor around on your monitor screen. Your mouse acts as a pointer until you locate what you want to access, then you ‘click’ on the mouse button to open or go to the location you have pointed to. Some commands require you to click once, others you click twice. Other times you may even right click or hold down the left button while accessing the option. The left area is generally used for issuing commands to your computer. To access special menus use the right side of your mouse.

When you use your mouse for word processing, you will find that it sometimes changes shape. Please look at the example on the right. By default there is a blinking cursor as you work through your document.

But if you need to perform another function, for instance you want to italicize a word, when you move your mouse to the top and over the Italics button, the mouse changes from a blinking I to an arrow.

Pressing down on the left-mouse twice quickly produces a double-click. Generally you double-click to open a file or a program. In this illustration the “My Computer” object to the right is dimmed, indicating a single click has activated it. If you click on the dimmed object, your action will open the file represented by that object.

You can also click and hold down the left mouse. This would be the case when you want to highlight a section of text by moving the mouse over it, or when you want to move an onscreen object using your mouse. In the example to the right you would left-click, then hold down the mouse while you drag across the area you wish to highlight.

You can also sometimes click and hold down the left mouse. This would be the case when you want to highlight a section of text by moving the mouse over it, or when you want to move an onscreen object using your mouse. In the example……

Right clicking of the mouse will open other menus for accessing more information. For instance, let’s say you have an image and you want to know its dimensions. You would first locate the image on your drive. Next, left-click once to highlight and select it. Then you ‘right-click’ on the highlighted image and a menu will appear to the right. Scroll to the bottom to ‘Properties’ and this time left click on the properties tab. The Properties menu will open to the right; left-click the Details Tab and your Image Dimensions is visible.