In the case of your netbook, you would need to use a mouse, or the tracking pad along with the buttons to highlight actual text for the purpose of highlighting it with a colour.


To rotate the screen you would need to click a button which rotates the screen. To zoom in and out, you may need to hold ctrl and roll the mouse wheel or press + -.

On a tablet like the iPad you can just run your finger over the area you want, and it is highlighted. To rotate you put two fingers on the screen and twist them and to zoom you just pinch. Those are gestures.