I can has gud spelling?

March 11, 2008 3:59 PM

Why is Firefox refusing to spellcheck?

I got my laptop in August and one of the first things I downloaded was Firefox. As far as I can remember, Firefox has never spellchecked on it. The option to check spelling as I type is enabled. I've tried re-installing Firefox and re-installing multiple versions of Firefox, but it just won't spell check.

Can I fix this? How? (Currently running version 3 beta 4.)

And a tag-along question. Searching AskMe archives suggest a built in MeFi spellchecker. Jessamyn also made reference to this a few days ago, something about it being a little button that looks like 'ABC'. Have never seen this. What?

posted by Phire to computers & internet (4 answers total)

You have to download a dictionary for it, I believe. See here.
posted by Jimbob at 4:23 PM on March 11, 2008

And you're right. At some point, versions of Firefox I downloaded seemed to come with a US English dictionary built in, but more recent versions haven't, for some reason.
posted by Jimbob at 4:24 PM on March 11, 2008

YES! WHOOT! Thanks so much, Jimbob :D
posted by Phire at 4:29 PM on March 11, 2008

I could be wrong, but Firefox has taken some flack for bundling things like a spell check in to the base product, essentially forcing people to use things they don't want to. The idea is that firefox should be a lightweight browser that people can then add-on to. That could very well why it has stopped spellchecking.
posted by Carillon at 7:46 PM on March 11, 2008