Most of the actions performed by the mouse in Windows XP or in application programs are carried out in two stages:
- Position the mouse cursor on the object you are interested in.
- Do one of the following:
- Click – without moving the mouse, press and release the mouse button (usually the left one).
- Double–click – without moving the mouse, quickly double-click and release the left mouse button.
- Broach – press the left mouse button, move the object to a new position and release the mouse button.
Depending on the situation, the mouse cursor takes various forms, signaling the actions being performed.
Scrolling text with the mouse
Move the mouse pointer to the place where you want to go and left-click. The text cursor will appear exactly in this place. This will happen only if the mouse pointer is in a place that is acceptable for entering characters, which is indicated by a special kind of mouse pointer. If your text does not fit entirely on one screen, then you need to scroll the text in the window so that the desired text fragment is visible on the screen. To do this, a special element called a scroll bar is located on the right side of the document window. There are arrow buttons along the edges of the scroll bar. The rectangle placed between the buttons is called a slider. It shows the current relative position of the fragment being viewed in the text. Relative means that if the slider is in the middle of the scroll bar, then the current text fragment in the window is in the middle of the document. The size of the slider may vary depending on the ratio of the size of the visible text fragment and the size of the entire text. If the text is placed entirely in the window, the scroll bar may be missing.
Another way to scroll the document is to drag the slider. Move the mouse pointer to the slider on the scroll bar, press the left mouse button and, without releasing it, move the mouse pointer down. The slider will start moving along with the pointer, and the document will start scrolling from the beginning to the end. Drag the scroll bar slider down until it stops, then release the mouse button, you will see the bottom edge of the page. If your document consists of several pages, then this way you can move from page to page.
After you have moved on to viewing the desired text fragment, click the mouse in the desired place of the text, and a text cursor will appear in this place.