Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual

Getting Ready for Windows

To get the most out of Windows with the least frustration, it helps to become familiar with the following concepts and terms. You’ll encounter these words and phrases over and over again—in the built-in Windows help, in computer magazines, and in this book.

The right mouse button is king

One of the most important features of Windows isn’t on the screen—it’s under your hand. The standard mouse has two mouse buttons. You use the left one to click buttons, highlight text, and drag things around on the screen.

When you click the right button, however, a shortcut menu appears on the screen, like the ones shown in Figure 1-2. Get into the habit of right-clicking things—icons, folders, disks, text in your word processor, buttons on your menu bar, pictures on a Web page, 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.

Figure 1-2.  Shortcut menus (sometimes called context menus) sometimes 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.

This is a big deal: Microsoft’s own research suggests that nearly 75% of Windows users don’t use the right ...