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Using the mouse

In this section we will demonstrate how you can control your computer by using the ‘mouse’. If you haven’t got a mouse attached to your computer then maybe you are using a portable computer with a ‘touch pad’. If you are then try moving your finger across the pad and see how this affects the ‘pointer’ on the screen.

The mouse is one of the main things you'll use to control what the computer does. Computer mouses can come in all shapes and sizes.

The mouse controls the movement of the cursor on the screen, which is usually a little white arrow. If you can't see the real cursor, try sliding the mouse around on the table until it appears on the computer screen.

If you are holding the mouse correctly the mouse’s tail should be facing away from you.

To move the cursor across the screen, just move the mouse in that direction on the desk. If you run out of space on your desk, simply lift the mouse up and bring it back to a place on the desk where you can move it some more.

Experiment with moving the mouse. What happens if you move the mouse in the direction of its tail? Or its head? Or side to side?

Left clicking

There are usually two buttons at the top end of the mouse, one on the left and one on the right.

The left button is used to do a number of tasks on the screen. The most common task is pressing a menu option or a link on the screen. You can do this by moving the cursor over the menu and clicking the left mouse button once, in other words pressing and releasing it quickly.

Sometimes you need to double-click; this means pressing the left button twice in quick succession. Double-clicking is usually used to start a new computer program, like a web browser or game.

Right clicking

Try clicking the right button on your mouse. You will see that a little box pops up; it’s called a pop-up menu. This is a menu with some useful options on it, giving you shortcuts to some of the things that you need to do quite often, such as copying and pasting.

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