10 computer mouse tips you should know (1)

Ah, using a mouse while computing can be such a big relief – and time saver too.

For me, beyond helping me save time, I find using a relaxing; as it allows me to use the onscreen keyboard and helps bypass most of those annoying Alt/Ctrl/Shift... operations.

Here are some of them:

1. Shift key and mouse click: Many text editors and programs allow you to highlight all or portions of text using the Shift key and the mouse. For example, place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph in a text editor, hold down the Shift key and click at the end of the paragraph to highlight the full paragraph.

Bonus tip: Holding down the Alt key while dragging and highlighting text in a text editor will allow you to selectively highlight text. This can be useful if your paragraph or other text is in a column.

2. Take full advantage of the scroll wheel: Everyone is familiar with a mouse wheels ability to scroll up and down on a page but this wheel can also do so much more:

The mouse wheel can also be used as a button. Pressing down on the wheel will act like a third mouse button. This can be used to open a web page in a tab by clicking the wheel on any link and can also be used to close a tab by clicking the wheel on any open tab.

Zoom in and Out on a web page, word document, excel spreadsheet, etc. by holding down the Ctrl key and scrolling up to zoom in and down to zoom out.

Some mouse wheels can be pushed left or right to also move back and forward on a web page.

Select with double and triple click. Any word can be selected by double-clicking the word. If you want to highlight the whole paragraph, click the mouse button three times on any text in the paragraph.

3. Use the right-click: Take full advantage of the right-click any time you highlight text or wish to view the properties of an object. For example, if you highlight a file or text, you can right-click that highlighted item copy it and then right-click anywhere else to paste it.

4. Ctrl key and mouse click or highlight: While holding down the Ctrl key you can left-click to select multiple objects or highlight multiple sections of text. For example, in Microsoft Windows you could hold down the Ctrl key and click to select multiple files at once.

If you wanted to highlight different parts of a paragraph or web page, you could also hold down the Ctrl key and select each section you wanted to copy.

5. Use the mouse side buttons: Many new computer mice have buttons on the side of the mouse. These buttons can be programmed to do anything.

However, by default the left-thumb button can be used to go back on a web page. This makes browsing the Internet more enjoyable since you do not need to move the mouse cursor to the browser back arrow button in order to go back a page.