The mouse, while the favorite rodent of most users, is not a very intuitive device: mouse skills must be learned. Most of the time, mouse skills are not an issue because the user is clicking on buttons, menus, and so forth, but sometimes a program must deal directly with mouse clicks and moves. Mouse operations fall into one of three categories.

In the event that your program must deal with directly handling mouse input, there are certain rules of thumb for how each of the expected skills is to be used. Single clicks are used for the most common actions in operating a control. This would be selecting items in a list, pushing a button, choosing a menu item, and placing the blinking text cursor in a BTextView. Double clicks are used for secondary functions, such as invoking an item in a BListView or selecting a word in a BTextView. Secondary mouse clicks (most commonly called "right-clicking") are generally used for a context-sensitive menu or, in the case of graphics programs, drawing with the secondary color. Mouse dragging is used for selecting text or moving things around. Mouse dragging with B_TERTIARY_BUTTON is generally used for panning. The scroll wheel by itself should be used just for scrolling, but your program may have a use for the scroll wheel when used with a modifier key, as below: