Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch
Although its hard for me to write an April article that isn’t about trickery or pranks, this year I’m going to talk about some equipment that most of us use – the computer mouse. Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in 1968. It had two wheels and one button. This lowly piece of equipment has evolved over the years.
The mouse that I use with my desktop has eighteen programmable buttons. I’ve found that this is even faster that using standard windows shortcuts. For instance, instead of pressing CTRL-W to close a window, I just push a button. Over the years, using the mouse has become force of habit. When away from my desk, I often find myself trying to use a button that isn’t on the mouse I’m using.
There are several other things you can do with your mouse that do not require any special programming. For instance, many people think that a mouse has two buttons. On many modern mice, the wheel in the middle can can be clicked like the other buttons. In most browsers, middle clicking a link will open it in a new tab or window. Check software manuals to see if middle click is supported. In most programs, pressing the wheel anywhere makes it possible to fast scroll through the page to move quickly through the page.
You can select any word by double-clicking on the word. If you want to highlight an entire paragraph or sentence, click the mouse button three times on any word. If you double-click and then drag your mouse, it will highlight one word at a time instead of only one letter.
There is a mouse shortcut that allows you to select full paragraphs of text. Place the cursor at the beginning of the text you wish to select, then scroll down to the end. Hold down the Shift key, and then left-click where you want the selection to end. The entire paragraph or paragraphs should highlight at one time.
You can also highlight portions of text that are not adjacent to each other. Highlight the first portion of text the traditional way. Then hold the CTRL key while left-clicking whatever else you want to highlight. This can be useful when you’re trying to copy only parts of a table or a list.
These are only a few tips that I personally use every day to make my workflow easier. A search of the internet will find many more. Give them a try and see if you can be more productive and efficient with your computer tasks.
Thanks for reading.