How To Spell Check With The Firefox Dictionary

Saikat Basu — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:02:15 +0000

As a web writer, correct spellings are essential to my work. As it is something that I have to be a perfectionist about, I take a lot of care with my proofreading with an installed dictionary. I also ‘live’ a lot within the Firefox browser and that too necessitates a good spell checker.

Thankfully, Firefox has a good one built right in. The worth of a spell checker can be realized when one is composing a professional email within a compose box or filling up a web form or writing in a blog. An error can spell bad results.

So, here’s a tour of spell checking with the Firefox dictionary.

Correct The Culprit

By default, Firefox catches all misspelt words since the spell checker is enabled. If it is not, then all the user needs to do is to check and enable ‘Check Spelling’ in the context menu. The wrongfully spelt out word gets marked out by a red dotted line. Right click on the word and you will get in the context menu a few correct options to choose from. Select the right one and your mistake stands corrected.

Add A Dictionary

In some cases, spell checking might not work. The antidote then lies in a byte-sized download. Firefox makes available to the user a number of dictionaries varying across languages. These dictionaries can be accessed via a download from the ‘Add Dictionaries’ context menu entry. The steps to follow are…

Right click on any word or in a blank text field.
In the context menu, go down to ‘Languages’ – ‘Add Dictionaries’

The browser directs you to the ‘Dictionaries & Language Packs’ page. There are nearly 71 available for download. You can download and use more than one dictionary. For instance, I use the English (US) and the English (UK) ones interchangeably because of the minute nuances in usage.

As a last confirmatory step, go to ‘Tools’ (on the Firefox toolbar)…choose ‘Options’…click on ‘Advanced’…and under the ‘General’ tab make sure that ‘Check my spelling as I type’ is checked.

Edit & Enhance The Dictionary

Just below the list of correct words in the context menu is the ‘Add to Dictionary’ entry. This allows individual addition of new words into the database of the dictionary. But sometimes because of our own click-happiness a lot of wrong words also find a place in the dictionary.

To correct the error of our ways, we have to drill down into our application folders where the Firefox profile folders are stored.

For Windows XP, it is – C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\

For Windows Vista, it is – %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxx.default

Note : For viewing the ‘Application Data’ folder, you might need to enable ‘Show Hidden Files And Folders’ through the ‘Folder Options (View)’ tab under ‘Tools’ on the menu toolbar.

Single out the file named ‘persdict.dat’. Open it with Notepad to see all the added words.
Delete the words which are not required.
Another added benefit of ‘hacking’ this file is that you can add en masse a lot of words. For instance, technical jargons, acronyms, trade names etc.
As the ‘persdict.dat’ file is perfectly editable, any replicable word list can be copy-pasted into the ‘dat’ file. For instance, the ‘custom.dic’ file created while adding custom dictionary words in MS Word can be accessed through the ‘C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof’ path and the word list copied into the Firefox file.
As you hop across computers, take the ‘persdict.dat’ file with you as it can also be copied into the same location in another computer thus giving you a personal portable spell checker to work with.

Thanks to Firefox, now spell checking is just a right click for the alphabetically challenged. Also remember to read my other article on TinySpell which may be a better solution for you.

So, how do you find the spell checker? Does it help you with your typos? Let us know your views in the comments.

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Check Your Spellings On The Fly With TinySpell (Windows)

Saikat Basu — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:01:52 +0000

Some good things do come in small packages and TinySpell (a spell checker for Windows) is one of them. For those interested in the written word and its correct spelling, TinySpell is a must have. There are lots of spelling utilities out there like the well known WordWeb or even Office suite’s own spell checker, but they require our intervention to give the correct spelling. TinySpell does the same job on the fly for any Windows application.

So in effect it becomes useful for applications like Notepad which do not have an in-built spellchecker. TinySpell comes as a freeware and also as a paid app. Here we will of course take a look at the freeware version.

TinySpell sits in the system tray and waits for you to commit a spelling mistake. It watches over your data in two ways.

Checking on the fly

It keeps tabs on your typing and then alerts you to any spelling errors. When it detects a misspelled word, an alarm beeps and shows a spelling tip and the TinySpell icon in the system tray changes colour from white to yellow.

Checking the clipboard

TinySpell also monitors the clipboard for any spell checks on the text you copy there. Again, the program notifies the user with a beep and a yellow icon. If the icon remains white it means that there’s no spelling errors in the text copied to the clipboard.

Correct your mistakes with a click

To correct the spelling mistakes click the TinySpell icon or press the assigned hot-key. A pop up gives a list of probable replacement words to select from the list. The selected word is inserted into your document, or is copied to the clipboard so you can paste it in your document.

The Dictionary

Of course, TinySpell is not the cure-all for poor English but it offers a lot of help with its 110,000 word rich American-English dictionary. Alas, the free version does not allow the adding of additional dictionaries; a facility provided in the paid TinySpell+ version. But as a consolation you can add (and remove) individual words to the dictionary in the way we do in Microsoft Word. There is also a tiny spelling window where you can search for the correct spelling of a misspelt word.

The End Opinion

For a 1.3 MB sized application, don’t expect an automated Webster clone and you won’t be disappointed. The program does live up to its name as a small utilitarian tool. It hogs very little of system resources and does indeed check for spelling errors in any application.

I tried it out within the text entry fields of web pages, Notepad, Paint and a few more and it does a fairly good job of alerting the user through beeps and visual cues. If the beeps jangle your nerves, they can be replaced easily with a more pleasing .wav sound file from the settings.

For the sake of criticism let’s say that the user needs to pause and correct the misspelt word immediately as there are no red underlines akin to MS Word. Accessibility would have got a boost with a right click context add-in.

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