When you receive Office 2007 Beta 2, you might look up at the Quick Access Toolbar and wonder why there's a lightning bolt overlaying the Print icon.
First thing to know: there have always been two versions of the Print command in Office. "Print" is the command which is typically on the File menu. Clicking this command brings up the Print dialog box in which you can specify print settings or cancel out if it's not what you intended.
On the Standard toolbar of Office 2003 applications is a command which shares an icon with normal Print but is actually different: "PrintDefault." This command immediately sends the document to your default printer without asking. You click the button and immediately paper starts coming out somewhere. This has functionality has posed some frustrating challenges over the last few years; I'll write about that in a coming article.
Anyway, to be consistent about exposing all of the print functionality in one place, we show both the Print and PrintDefault items in the Print category of the Office Button. Print is called "Print" and PrintDefault is called "Quick Print." In order to make them have distinct icons, a lightening bolt was added to Quick Print to make it seem... well, I guess lightening quick.
Quick Print. But not actual size.
Then it was noticed that the large and small versions of the Quick Print icon were inconsistent, so the lightening bolt was added to the small version of the icon shown in the Quick Access Toolbar.
The result? People think their printer has a connection problem. Although "lightening bolt" sort of means "Auto" in the Office icon lexicon, when applied to something with a connection like a printer, it looks like that connection is busted. Whoops!
We've fixed the icon up internally for future builds, but the lightning bolt is in Beta 2. So when you get your copy, you'll know why the printer is being electrocuted.