Page 284 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Pointer speed. It comes as a surprise to many people that the

cursor doesn’t move 5 inches when the mouse moves 5 inches on
the desk. Instead, you can set things up so moving the mouse 1
millimeter moves the pointer 1 full inch—or vice versa—using the
“Select a pointer speed” slider.

It may come as an even greater surprise that the cursor doesn’t
generally move proportionally to the mouse’s movement,
regardless of your “Pointer speed” setting. Instead, the cursor

moves farther when you move the mouse faster. How much farther
depends on how you set the “Select a pointer speed” slider.

The Fast setting is nice if you have an enormous monitor, since it

prevents you from needing an equally large mouse pad to get from
one corner to another. The Slow setting offers more control but

forces you to constantly pick up and put down the mouse as you
scoot across the screen, which can be frustrating. (You can also
turn off the disproportionate-movement feature completely by
turning off “Enhance pointer precision.”)

Snap To. A hefty percentage of the times when you reach for the
mouse, it’s to click a button in a dialog box. If you, like millions of

people before you, usually click the default (outlined) button—
such as OK, Next, or Yes—then the Snap To feature can save you
the effort of positioning the cursor before clicking.

When you turn on Snap To, every time a dialog box appears, your
mouse pointer jumps automatically to the default button so all you
need to do is click. (And to click a different button, like Cancel,

you have to move the mouse only slightly to reach it.)

Display pointer trails. The options available for enhancing pointer

visibility (or invisibility) are mildly useful under certain
circumstances, but mostly they’re just for show.

If you turn on “Display pointer trails,” for example, you get ghost

images that trail behind the cursor like a bunch of little ducklings