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FAQ: Mouse Buttons
What's all this about "red", "yellow", and "blue" buttons? My mouse's buttons are all the same color.
The Smalltalk image from which Squeak is derived was designed to run with a three-button mouse on an Alto or Dorado computer. These buttons were known as "red", "yellow", and "blue", and some mice really had buttons of these colors.
For most 3-button mice, the mapping is:
left-mouse -> "red" (a.k.a. primary)
middle-mouse -> "yellow" (a.k.a. secondary)
right-mouse -> "blue" (a.k.a. tertiary)
Most Win32 machines have only 2-button mice. On them, the mapping is:
left-mouse -> "red"
right-mouse -> "yellow"
alt-left-mouse -> "blue"
However, if you do have a 3-button mouse on Win32, you might want to set the "use 3 button mapping" to get the default reading from above. To do this, right-click on the Windows titlebar of the Squeak application (or press F2), and select the "VM Preferences->Use 3 button mouse mapping" menu item.
Finally, Macs only have one mouse button. The mapping on Macs is:
mouse -> "red"
option-mouse -> "yellow"
cmd-mouse -> "blue"
I got that, but what do the three buttons do?
Although the meaning of buttons can be modified, the general assignment is this:
"red" -> select
"yellow" -> menu
"blue" -> meta operation
In MVC, the meta operation is the window menu, while for morphs, it brings up the morph "halo" (the colored dots).
{Acorn machines have the proper number of buttons, and so need no complex and confusing mapping. The only point you need to remember is that the 'adjust' button is used for the window menu and not for adjusting the selection. -- TPR}