Saving web images without right-click on the mouse?

August 6, 2012 5:52 PM

I'm sure not knowing this makes me an idiot, but I need quick help saving a few images from NASA's site to my hard drive without the ability to right-click. Right-clicking on my optical Microsoft mouse has apparently just died; I'm getting no menu when I right-click on an image (everything else is working fine; changing batteries doesn't help). For now I'm alt-left-clicking to highlight the image and then copying it, but is there another way to pull up the menu that usually appears when you right-click a web image in Windows?

I've found keyboard shortcuts for the other things I usually right-click for (ctrl-left-click to open a link in a new tab, e.g.), but can't find anything similar for the image menu.

posted by mediareport to computers & internet (12 answers total)

Do you have a context menu button on your keyboard? Mine is to the right of the right alt key. Pressing it brings up whatever would've shown up by right-clicking on that particular spot.
posted by mittens at 5:57 PM on August 6, 2012

You can drag the image directly to a folder by holding down the left mouse button while moving the mouse (at least, you can in Firefox - don't know about other browsers).
posted by Paragon at 5:58 PM on August 6, 2012

Jeez, I *knew* I was getting hung up on something stupid. Thanks, Paragon. I blame yoga making my brain muscles wobbly.

Um, can we delete this now? :)
posted by mediareport at 6:04 PM on August 6, 2012

mittens, that worked for pages for me, but not for specific images.

If anyone knows a way to use the keyboard to pull up the menu that appears when you right-click on a web image ("view image," "save image," etc), I'd still like to know about it.
posted by mediareport at 6:10 PM on August 6, 2012

You should be able to select most images the way you would a sentence of text (i.e; click on a spot of dead space somewhere near the image, then drag the cursor from there past the image), then hit Ctrl-C.

For IE, I am confident there is no keyboard shortcut to pull up that menu. For firefox there isn't, but there's probably an extension that would either do that, or something similar.
posted by jacalata at 6:27 PM on August 6, 2012

On a mac: hold the ctrl key while left-clicking to simulate a right-click.
On a pc: It depends. Try holding some keys down while clicking.
posted by Aquaman at 7:03 PM on August 6, 2012

The right-click keyboard shortcut is to hold down SHIFT and then press F10. Some older keyboards have a rightclick key; the laptop I'm using at the moment has this key.
posted by theora55 at 7:30 PM on August 6, 2012

You know, jacalata, I get so annoyed when I try to copy text and get a bunch of images and web cruft with it that I totally forgot that option. Thanks for alerting me that there might be an extension in Firefox, though.

(I know, I know, I need a new mouse. It was just so sudden and all.)
posted by mediareport at 7:30 PM on August 6, 2012

Theora, shift-F10 is how I get the context menu mittens mentioned above. It doesn't work for me on images, though.
posted by mediareport at 7:32 PM on August 6, 2012

You can use the keyboard to control your mouse with a Windows feature called mousekeys. In Windows, hit alt+shift+numlock.

In Windows 7 at least, you can still control your mouse while mousekeys is enabled.

Get the pointer where you want it to be using the mouse.

Hit the minus sign on the numberpad, then hit 5 on the numberpad. This is the same as right clicking.

It is also possible that there is nothing wrong with your mouse, and it is just that your right clicking has been disabled. This is how to disable and reenable right clicking:
http://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Right-Click-in-Windows-XP
posted by Sleeper at 2:51 AM on August 7, 2012

You could try left clicking just in front of the picture, then pressing tab on the keyboard until the picture is highlighted, then press the context key. That should get you the right-click menu for the picture.
posted by drzoon at 5:23 AM on August 7, 2012

Have you tried (in firefox)
Tools - Page Info - Media - Save As?
posted by Julnyes at 12:11 PM on August 7, 2012