strange anomoly on my mac

I'm new to mac and hoping to get some help with a problem.

My mac was working fine up until a few days ago when it started doing this funny, but extremely annoying thing: my mouse would start making this clicking sound and whatever overlapping windows I had open on my screen would separate, the background would go black, and everything would become disabled. If I moved my mouse over one of the windows, it would become highlighted in blue, and I would only be able to use it if I clicked on it (this would bring all the windows back to their overlapped positioned).

The click from my mouse is very strange. I don't even know how I'm causing it. I know that if I don't touch my mouse, it doesn't click. But it's not as though I'm doing anything when my hand is on it (like clicking buttons, moving it around, manipulating the scroll wheel). It's almost as though it has some super-sensitive mechanism detect very subtle movements of my finger - maybe even my pulse.

This is making it really hard to work on my computer. Does anyone know what this is and how to stop it?

Thanks

I think what you are referring to is the expose feature which is similar to that of the alt tab feature in windows. It is caused by a guesture with your mouse. You can disable it in system preferences. Hope this helps.

PS. You're probably squeezing the sides of the mouse, which invokes Expose by default on some mice. As mentioned above, you can disable this.

yeah ... sounds like expose .. also check in System Preferences> Expose and Spaces see if you have specified any "Hot Corners" to activate "All Windows".

Thanks for the suggestions. They seem to have worked.

At some point you might want to make use of Expose. There are the preferences under Expose & Spaces, but also you can assign your mouse buttons to activate it. Funny though, how you thought something was wrong with your Mac.

Expose is great.