FAQ
The mouse is one of the most basic input devices.
Practical
You can move the mouse around. Also you have two buttons, the left one and the right one.
You can
- move: the cursor on the screen moves as you move the mouse.
- leftclick: click on the left button.
- rightclick: click on the right button.
- drag: leftclick on an icon (to "grab" it) and keep the button
down while moving the mouse, the release the button.
How it works
>
introduced by Apple in 84
mechanical mouse
- The ball
- The x- and y-rollers
- the disk having 36 holes, moved by rollers
- infrared LED and an sensor on both sides of the disk.
- encoder chip: tiny processor transforms pulses from infrared sensors
into bytes to be sent towards the computer
optical mouse
Emits light of the surface
and analyses movement using a camera.
- no mechanical parts
- no dirt
Into the cable ...
using again either PS/2 or USB,
again powers comes from the computer to the mouse,
data goes from mouse to computer, again as a string of bytes.
Substitutes
track ball, ...
Avoiding a mouse
Sometimes, for instance with a notebook in a plane, you want to avoid mouse use
and also trackball, ... .
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