The Very Basics

To use this book, and indeed to use a computer, you need to know some basics. This book assumes that you're familiar with a few terms and concepts:

• Clicking. This book gives you three kinds of instructions that require you to use the mouse that's attached to your computer. To click means to point the arrow cursor at something on the screen and then—without moving the cursor at all—press and release the clicker button on the mouse (or your laptop trackpad). If your mouse or trackpad has two buttons, the "clicker button" is the left button.

  To double-click, of course, means to click twice in rapid succession, again without moving the cursor at all. And to drag means to move the cursor while holding down the button.

  When you're told to Ctrl+click something, you click while pressing the Ctrl key (on the bottom row of the keyboard). Such related procedures as Shift+clicking and Alt+clicking work the same way—just click while pressing the corresponding key at the bottom of your keyboard.

• Shortcut menus. One of the most important features of Windows and Mac OS X isn't on the screen—it's under your hand. As noted above, you use the left mouse button to click buttons, highlight text, and drag things around on the screen.

  When you click the right button, however, a shortcut menu appears onscreen, like the ones shown in Figure I-2. (On a Macintosh with only one mouse or trackpad button, you "right-click" something by holding down the Control key as you click.)

  Figure I-2. Shortcut menus (sometimes called contextual menus) often list commands that aren't in the menus at the top of the window. Here, for example, are the commands that appear when you right-click a folder (left) and some highlighted text in a word processor (right). Once the shortcut menu has appeared, left-click the command you want.

  

  Get into the habit of right-clicking things on the Internet—email messages, Web-page photos, text in an article, and so on. The commands that appear on the shortcut menu will make you much more productive and lead you to discover handy functions you never knew existed.

• Menus. The menus are the words at the top of your window or screen: File, Edit, and so on. Click one to make a list of commands appear, as though they're written on a window shade you've just pulled down.

• Keyboard shortcuts. If you're typing along in a burst of creative energy, it's sometimes disruptive to have to take your hand off the keyboard, grab the mouse, and then use a menu (for example, to use the Bold command). That's why many experienced computer fans prefer to trigger menu commands by pressing certain combinations on the keyboard. For example, in most word processors, you can press Ctrl+B to produce a boldface word (on the Macintosh, it's -B). When you read an instruction like "press Ctrl+B," start by pressing the Ctrl key, then, while it's down, type the letter B, and finally release both keys.

• Icons. The colorful inch-tall pictures that appear in your various desktop folders are the graphic symbols that represent each program, disk, and document on your computer. If you click an icon one time, it darkens; you've just highlighted or selected it, in readiness to manipulate it by using, for example, a menu command.

If you've mastered this much information, you have all the technical background you need to enjoy The Internet: The Missing Manual.