Having a fast computer is nice, but being able to accomplish common tasks in
a quick manner is often much nicer. There are many mouse short cuts we can use
for common tasks, which get over looked in general computer training courses.
We are going to go through some of these in this article.
Copying
At some point everyone wants to copy a block of text, a picture, or a file
from one place to another. There are several ways to do this common task, and
some of the more effective ways are not really taught, though they do work,
and make life much easier.
Highlighting text is fairly common, so I'm not going to get too basic here,
what I want to introduce are methods that are less common. The highlight, copy,
paste method is used most often when copying, however, in most cases hightlight,
drag and drop is much faster.
You can also drag and drop image files from a browser window straight to your
desktop, or into a folder.
Drag Drop Open
Most computer users know that if you double-click on a file, the Windows system
will open that file using the assigned default program. For example, you double-click
on a MS Word document (*.doc), your computer opens the file using MSWord. But
lets say you didn't want to use the default program. In this example I want
to listen to Don Winslow's 'Beautiful
Ride' audio story, but I want to use WinAmp, not Media Player. I can drag
the file to a program short cut (or the EXE program file if that is easier)
and drop it, and Windows will try to open the file with that program.
This is very handy if you want to open multiple files using the same program.
Let's say I have eight Word documents that I want to make some quick edits too.
I can open each one individually or I can highlight them all, and drag them
to the Word Shortcut on my desktop. If I drop them all on the shortcut, Windows
will open each file in its own Word Window. Some programs function a little
differently; Adobe Acrobat will open all of the files, but stacked inside a
single Acrobat program Window.
Drag Link To Tab
Web surfing with Tabbed Browsers is another place we can use Drag and Drop.
Let's say that we find a link to a page in an article, which we want to see
but not right this second. We can click-drag and drop the link on our Tab area,
and Firefox (and most tab type browsers) will open a new tab for us with that
link.
Even basic mouse types have adjustable options in the Windows environment.
Some types of mice have rather elaborate settings. The basics are the speed
in which the pointer moves on the screen, the shape and color of the mouse pointers,
mouse trails, or no mouse trails and what the mouse buttons are assigned to
do. If you are left handed for example, you can change your mouse settings to
work more comfortably in the Mouse option area inside the Control Panel folder.
Go to Start->Control Panel->Mouse
Double-clicking to open a file is not necessary; we can set our computers up
to open files on a single click. By default a single click Highlights, or 'chooses'
a file, but if you would rather just have the file open when you click on it
once (like what happens with hyperlinks in a browser), go to My Computer, from
the Menu choose Tools->Folder Options. A dialog box will open and you can
set the Open option to Single click by selecting the radio button.
Mouse Key Combos
If you want to open a hyperlink in a new browser window then hold the Shift
key down and then click on the link.
To open the link in a new tab, hold down the Ctrl key and click the link.
If you want to download or copy the page the link points at to your desktop,
then hold down the Alt key and click on the link. (This only works in Firefox,
IE doesn't do anything with the Alt key).
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