Basic Skills

This chapter introduces you to the basic skills that you need to work with the MATE Desktop.

Mouse Skills

This section describes what the mouse buttons do, and what the different pointers mean.

A mouse is a pointing device that lets you move the mouse pointer on the screen. The mouse pointer is usually a small arrow with which you point to objects on your screen. Pressing a mouse button will perform a particular action on the object over which your mouse pointer is situated, depending on which button you press.

Mouse Button Conventions

The instructions in this manual are for three buttoned, right-handed mouse devices, the most common type. If you use another type of mouse or pointing device, you should take care to locate the corresponding buttons on your mouse. If you use a left-handed mouse, see the paragraph on setting mouse orientation below.

Some mice lack a middle button. If you have a two-button mouse device, then your system may be configured to use chording to allow middle button simulation. If chording is activated, you press the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously, to simulate the the middle mouse button. A middle mouse button is by no means necessary to use MATE.

The mouse button conventions used in this manual are as follows:

Left mouse button

The button on the left side of a mouse device. This is the main mouse button, used for selecting, activating, pressing buttons etc... When you are told to "click" it is implied that you should click with the left button, unless specifically stated.

Middle mouse button

The middle button of a mouse device. On many mice with a scroll wheel, the scroll wheel can be pushed down for a middle mouse button click.

Right mouse button

The button on the right side of a mouse device. Often, this button displays a context menu for the object under the pointer.

Use Mouse Preferences to reverse the orientation of your mouse device. You will then need to reverse the mouse button conventions used in this manual and other MATE documentation. See ??? for more information about setting your mouse preferences.

Mouse Actions

The following conventions are used in this manual to describe actions that you take with the mouse:

You can perform the following actions with the mouse:

Left mouse button

• Select text.

• Select items.

• Drag items.

• Activate items.

Middle mouse button

• Paste text.

• Move items.

• Move windows to the back.

Right mouse button

Use the right mouse button to open a context menu for an item, if a menu applies. For most items, you can also use the Shift+F10 keyboard shortcut to open the context menu once the item has been selected.

For example, when viewing files in the file manager, you select a file by clicking with the left mouse button and open a file by double-clicking with the left mouse button. Clicking with the right mouse button will bring up a context menu for that file.

Mouse Pointers

As you use the mouse, the appearance of the mouse pointer can change. The appearance of the pointer provides feedback about a particular operation, location, or state.

The following mouse pointers are shown as your mouse passes over different elements of the screen:

Normal pointer

This pointer appears during normal use of the mouse.

Busy pointer

This pointer appears over a window that is busy performing a task. You cannot use the mouse to give this window any input, but you can move to another window and work with that.

Resize pointer

This pointer indicates that you can grab the control to resize parts of the interface. This appears over the borders of windows and over resize handles between panes in a window. The direction of the arrows indicates in which direction you can resize.

Hand pointer

This pointer appears when you hover over a hypertext link, in a web page for example. This pointer indicates that you can click on the link to load a new document or perform an action.

I-beam pointer

This pointer is shown when the mouse is over text that you can select or edit. Click to place the cursor where you want to type text, or drag to select text.

The following mouse pointers are shown when dragging an item such as a file, or a piece of text. They indicate the result of releasing the mouse button to drop the object being moved.

Move pointer

This pointer indicates that when you drop the object, the object is moved from the old location to the new location.

Copy pointer

This pointer indicates that when you drop the object, a copy of the object is created where you drop it.

Symbolic link pointer

This pointer indicates that when you drop the object, a symbolic link to the object is created where you drop the object. A symbolic link is a special type of file that points to another file or folder. For more on this, see ???.

Ask pointer

This pointer indicates that when you drop the object, you will be given a choice of what to do. A menu will open to allow you to choose which operation you would like to perform. For instance, you may be able to move, copy, or create a symbolic link.

Not available pointer

This pointer indicates that you cannot drop the object at the current location. Releasing the mouse button now will have no effect: the dragged object will be returned to its starting location.

Move panel object pointer

This pointer appears when you drag a panel or a panel object with the middle mouse button. See ??? for more information on panels.

Move window pointer

This pointer appears when you drag a window to move it. See ??? for more information on moving windows.

Keyboard Skills

For almost every task that you can perform with the mouse, you can use the keyboard to perform the same task. Shortcut keys are keys that provide you with a quick way to perform a task.

You can use shortcut keys to perform general MATE Desktop tasks and to work with interface items such as panels and windows. You can also use shortcut keys in applications. To customize your shortcut keys, use the Keyboard Shortcuts preference tool. See ??? for more information about configuring keyboard shortcuts.

You can also modify the MATE Desktop preferences to use keyboard accessibility features. See ??? for more information about the keyboard accessibility features.

The following sections describe the shortcut keys that you can use throughout the desktop and applications.

Global Shortcut Keys

Global shortcut keys enable you to use the keyboard to perform tasks related to your desktop, rather than tasks on the currently selected window or application. The following table lists some global shortcut keys:

Window Shortcut Keys

Window shortcut keys allow you to use the keyboard to perform tasks on the currently focused window. The following table lists some window shortcut keys:

Application Keys

Application shortcut keys enable you to perform application tasks. You can use shortcut keys to perform application tasks more quickly than if you use a mouse. The following table lists some common application shortcut keys:

In addition to these shortcut keys, all applications support a set of keys to navigate and work with the user interface. These keys allow you to perform operations that you might normally perform with a mouse. The following table describes some interface control keys:

Access Keys

A menubar is a bar at the top of a window that contains the menus for the application. An access key is an underlined letter in a menubar, menu, or dialog that you can use to perform an action. On a menubar, the access key for each menu is underlined.

To open a menu, hold the Alt key, then press the access key. In the menu, the access key for each menu item is underlined. To choose a menu item when a menu is displayed, you can simply press the access key for the menu item.

For example, to open a new window in the Help application, press Alt+F to open the File menu, then press N to activate the New Window menu item.

You can also use access keys to access elements in a dialog. In a dialog, one letter in most dialog elements is underlined. To access a particular dialog element, hold Alt, then press the access key.