Thursday 3 January 2013

HIDDEN POWERS OF YOUR MOUSE

By Ishant Gupta


The mouse speeds up your work on the laptop or your PC. It’s a small wonder. You can do many things like Cut, Copy, Paste, highlight, scroll etc. with just a click of your mouse. You may know a lot about the uses of the mouse, but I have got a few more uses that I am sure you would be surprised to know.

Click tricks
Double click highlights a word and triple click highlights a paragraph. But what if you wanted to select a column of text of your word document, without moving the other text? Here’s how you can do it. Press the Alt button along with the left click on the mouse (Option left mouse on Mac) and drag the cursor over the text you want to select. The best part is you don’t need to format the required text into a column before selecting it.

Scroll tricks
The scroll wheel at the bottom of the mouse helps you to move up and down on the page. But if you combine this action with other keys, you can get more movements.

  • Scroll to Enlarge-Pressing the control button and scrolling can help you to zoom in or out on the current page. Control + Scroll up, zooms in the current page and Control + Scroll down, zooms out the current page. On a Mac OS this combination will help to zoom in or out the whole screen and not only the document you may be viewing.
  • Scroll Wheel as a back Button- While surfing on certain web browsers, you can press the shift button and scroll back to all the sites you have recently visited. Some mice have buttons on the side of the body that can be used as forward and backward button on many web browsers.
  • Scroll Sideways- In some versions of Excel, pressing the shift key while scrolling can help you to move sideways on an excel sheet. This is most helpful in big Excel sheets.
Windows Specific Tricks
The above tricks can be used on both Windows and Mac OS. But there are some tricks specific to a Windows PC.

  • To view two windows on a 50-50 split- Drag the title bar of your left document to the right and the title bar of the right document to the left. This will cause them to appear in equal sizes on the screen, dividing the screen into half.
  • To minimize all windows except the current window- Shake the Title bar. If you want to maximize all the windows that you minimized with this shortcut, just click on the title bar.
  • To enlarge a window- Drag the title bar to the top.
Sneaky Trick
Suppose you want to have a quick snack bite and this requires you to move away from your secure work terminal. You don’t want to re-login when you come back. What do you do? There is one option that you press the sleep mode. But I have got something better. Move the mouse cursor to the analog clock set on the bottom right of the screen. The mouse recognizes the seconds hand movement of the clock. This makes your PC think that you are still working. I think it’s a cool trick but let me warn you it’s not a very secure trick.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...