Mouse Clix

By: Hobie Lunin

Cut, Copy and Paste (among other things)

Many of my readers are aware that I teach computer subjects. This always gives me a source of real questions that I can use to write my articles. Here are some recent cases.

A student uses Juno for mail and another Internet Service Provider for accessing the web. (You may ask what the point of that is and I will have to say that this is what the student wants to do and I really am just answering the question.) He received an animated greeting card via e-mail from his son and in the e-mail was a URL (the Internet address) for the card. How would he then be able to get that address from the Juno mail into his regular ISP browser? The answer is in today’s title. The point here is that most people know that you can do these operations on a page in a particular program and not realize that you can move text from one page to another using this “troika."

First, why even do that? What happens when you just click on the address right there in Juno, and why wouldn’t it take you there directly? Good question. Remember from a previous article that you read and write email off-line in Juno. Therefore, when I clicked on the address in Juno the computer responded by attempting to go on-line. Great, I thought, but for some unknown reason, busy maybe, it never happened. What to do next?

I selected the Address for the card, by dragging my “I-beam” cursor across the address to highlight it. Next, I clicked on Edit and then Copy. I then minimized the Juno e-mail to see the desktop, clicked on the icon for the regular ISP and in a few moments, I was looking at the Internet Explorer Browser. There I clicked on the address that was already in the address field of the browser, highlighting it, and then clicked on edit and then paste. The new URL was now in the address window and shortly afterward; the animated card popped up and started doing its thing.

Actually, I did not do that exactly. I had discovered some time ago that the cut, copy and paste operations can be accessed by right clicking the mouse in most programs so that there was no need to open the Edit file. Problem solved. In addition, we learned that you can cut or copy from one application and paste to another completely different one.

Not only can we copy and paste words but whole pages can be moved this way as well as paragraphs and graphics. If for some reason you cannot paste to the new location that button will be grayed out. I find that this is very infrequent.

OK, what else has come up recently from my students?

A question I have answered before. In order to print only what you want from a page on the Internet, you must highlight it on the page using your cursor. This part, my students remember. The part that they forget is that when the print screen comes up, you must click the radio button (a round circle that will have a dot in it when you click on it) this indicates Selection. When we highlight something, we have “selected” it. Then, when you print, it will work. If you only select, it will print the entire page, you must click Selection on the print screen.

I have a student who is filling out a form for a rental car on a web site he found and cannot figure out what to do next. He is looking for something such as Done or Continue to keep the activity going. The answer is just out of sight; he needed to scroll lower on the page to find what he is looking for. Yes, there is a tendency to think that it is like a page in a book in that when you look at it you assume you are seeing it all. In fact, the optimum length for a web page is 2 or 3 times the height of the screen. Keep on scrolling!

And scroll you do, when you are surfing. I recommend to surfers in my classes to get a mouse with a scroll wheel, it makes it much easier to check up or down on the page for the next direction on a series of screens. You do not need to locate the scroll bar or your cursor with your eyes or look for the arrows on your keyboard. The scroll wheel is a great time saver.

Very few of my students type well. That is, they are not touch typists and take time searching for each letter. Truth is, I am not a typist either but can manage 30 – 35 words a minute using my eyes and four or five of my fingers. I suggest that those of you who are slow at the keyboard start practicing with two hands and more than one finger on each hand. Start typing your life story in WordPad and by the time you get to your first 2-wheeled bike, you will be typing reasonably fast. Alternatively, get a typing training program to use in your computer such as “Mavis Beacon.”

Lastly, I often see confusion about what is IN the computer and what is NOT. When you are not on-line, that is, you are not using your dial-up connection; everything you see on your screen is definitely in your computer. When you go on-line, you can see pages that are stored in other computers called servers that house all the pages of the web. These can be anywhere in the world. The taskbars that you see in your browser are in your computer and are not part of what comes from the web.

Hobie Lunin is a Computer Instructor and Consultant, and will answer questions at: mouseclix2@yahoo.com