The mouse is the most common way of interacting with the graphical user interface (GUI) of modern computers. Below is a picture of the most common types of computer mice.

The mouse fits comfortably in the left or right hand and is moved around on a flat surface to control the movement of the cursor on the screen. The cursor is usually an arrow and the object on the screen the arrow is pointing at when you click one of the mouse buttons becomes the current active object. The object could be a window, an icon, a menu, a button or even the screen itself, commonly called the desktop. You can also select objects or other content from within individual program windows. An example of this is selecting a section of text in a text editor program.

To select an object you normally click once. To launch (execute or run) an object you would normally double-click the left button. (ie: Press it twice in quick succession.)

For example, to launch a program you would double-click on it's program icon on the desktop. To the right is an example of a program icon. In this case for a program called Winzip.

On many computer systems clicking the right button on an object will cause a menu of further options to be displayed, sometimes called a context menu. Examples of options that might be displayed in this menu are options to launch, open or explore the object or send the object to something or someone. There is often also a properties option which can be selected which will tell you lots of useful things about the object.

The mouse can be used to select a group of objects by clicking and holding down the left button and then dragging the mouse across the other objects you want to select. The button is released when all of the required objects have been selected.

You can usually copy one or more selected objects to the clipboard by pressing CTRL & C or paste objects or information from the clipboard into the program where the cursor is currently located by pressing CTRL & V. See this page for more information on control keys.

Finally you can quite often copy one or more objects from one place to another by first selecting it/them, then clicking the left button on the selection and dragging the mouse (ie: cursor) to the required target location and finally releasing the button. An example use for this is to copy one or more files from one folder to another.

Some mice like the wheel mouse have a wheel which can be used to scroll the contents of a window. An example of this is scrolling up and down the contents of a web page such as this one.

Finally, some mice have 3 buttons where the behaviour of the middle button can be changed using a supplied program to do whatever you wish.