Overview

Windows supports mice with up to five buttons: left, middle, and right, plus two additional buttons.

Mice also have a scroll wheel that can also be clickable, making it the middle button.

Win32

Keyboard

The keyboard is used for distinct types of input:

• Character input — Text that the user types into an input control.
• Keyboard shortcuts — Key strokes that the user inputs using modifier keys.
• System commands — Key strokes that invoke system functions using the ALT key.

When the user presses a key, the hardware generates a scan code.

Scan codes are device-depend and there are separate scan codes for key-up and key-down events.

Windows translates the scan codes from the keyboard driver into virtual-key codes that are device-independent.

<aside> 📎 The list of virtual-key codes is in the Microsoft Documentation.

</aside>

The virtual-key code for the numeric keys correspond to their ASCII code.

The virtual-key code for the alphabetic keys correspond to their uppercase ASCII code.

The naming of some of the virtual-key codes is not intuitive, and correspond to the following keys.

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Keys

When the user presses or releases a key when a window has keyboard focus, the window receives one of the following messages.

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