Spell check in Firefox?

[Why Syzygy]

I'm having to use Firefox for a web application. (Still prefer Opera)

Doesn't it have a built in spell checker? Or is that an add on, which I can't find?
If it is an add-on, which one do you recommend?

[charlie]

1. Built in

I had to look for it, since I always disable it. Options --> Advanced --> General. See that "Check my spelling as I type" is ticked.

If you want to check spelling on a static webpage, Lifehacker has a bookmarklet that'll make it work:

http://lifehacker.com/5335686/use-firefoxs-spell-checker-on-any-page

[Why Syzygy]

2. Thanks.

That is strange. It is checked but failed to catch a typo in a text box. I'll keep an eye on it.

Why do you disable it? Curious.

[charlie]

3. I find it distracting

Letting the occasional misspelling get by in a forum post doesn't bother me.

Try right-clicking in a text box. There should be a "Check Spelling" option. If it says "Add Dictionaries" instead, that's your problem, no dictionaries. Select that and download one for your browser.

[Why Syzygy]

4. I've never seen you misspell

a single word. And I would notice ;)

[charlie]

5. That's awful nice of you

:)

Plenty of my klunkers are enshrined here. Like shortening Kurt Vonnegut to a single word, Konnegut, not too long ago. And that was in the boldface subject line.

I don't really know why, but automagic squiggles and suggestions appearing while I type annoy me. If a post is loaded with names and slang, it's like typing through a cloud of gnats.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Text Box ...

Spell check doesn't work in certain kinds of input boxes, e.g. the Subject field on DU.

[charlie]

7. That's odd

Apparently, FF Linux is different. In XP, it works on the reply subject line.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Huh ...

Actually, I'm using XP at the moment, and it's not working in the Subject field. It's always been like this, on several machines, although I couldn't tell you why.

I don't really pay attention to spell check much (obviously), so I'd never questioned it.

So much for any more productivity out of me today. Now I have a mystery to solve ... as though I need an excuse. :)

[charlie]

9. I think I've got it

I was doing it manually through the context menu, since I don't run check-as-you-type. I neglected to mention that. It works that way.

Now that I've got it enabled, it doesn't do checking on the fly in the subject line, like you said.

I've got to restart to disable checking. Do you know of a way to force a restart while multiple tabs and windows are open? I used a pending addon install to do it a minute ago and now I'm stuck. I don't want to have to close or bookmark these bajillion tabs. Killing it with the task manager seems like a hamfisted thing to do.

[RoyGBiv]

10. Okay ... that makes sense

As for your question, if you have the function enabled, FF should ask you to save your tabs when you try to close out of it.

Problem is, I don't recall off the top of my head how to enable that if it's been disabled. I think it's one of those dialogue boxes that lets you say "don't ever ask me this again, dammit," and then it damn well doesn't.

[RoyGBiv]

11. Here it is ...

about:config

browser.sessionstore.enabled

Make it true, and it'll give you the option when you go to close.

[charlie]

12. I'm back

We're having whacko weather here. Intermittent snowstorms, with near zero visibility. In El Paso! My wife got let off early, so us dopes decided to go for lunch. Which meant we just spent an hour making a 20 minute drive, because snow stuns El Pasoans like turkeys caught in the rain.

Thanks Roy. I was looking up the about:config options before I left and read that one's been depreciated as of 3.5. It's not one of the default options, so I added it as a new preference. But, I still only get the choice of closing tabs or aborting.

Supposedly, unless I read it wrong, the method now is to change the "When Firefox Starts" option (above the homepage option) to "Show my windows and tabs from last time". I've done that, and still get the same prompt.

A conundrum. Wouldn't it be funny if those required a restart to enable them, har har?

I'm going to kill it with the task manager and see what sort of prompts I get after the session is restored.

[charlie]

13. No difference

I'll just have to wait until I'm ready to close all tabs, so I can do a proper shutdown and see what happens.

They should insert a "Save session and exit" selection into their File menu.

[RoyGBiv]

15. Bizarre ...

You don't get this?



I'm using FF 3.5.5. The only difference I can imagine is that I'm using the portable edition. The browser.sessionstore is there and is enabled by default.

Having said that, I actually have it disabled to save wear and tear on my USB stick, but it gives me the option anyway, which suggests there's some other setting somewhere.

Huh ...

Well, I've been forced into productivity today against my will. Something about this is tickling my brain, but I can't think of what right now.

[charlie]

18. Uh-uh

Maybe I need to close FF properly before the Options menu selection I made will take.

[RoyGBiv]

28. Here's Mozilla's advice ...

It appears various combinations of settings can disable the "save" option.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox+does+not+ask+to+save+tabs+and+windows+on+exit

If that's not it, I'm stumped.

[charlie]

30. Thank you, Roy

Did 'em all, save one, no change so far. Only thing left is to check plugins. I'm only running two, Unplug and NoScript, I'll disable those next restart. I kinda doubt they'll they'll have anything to do with it, though.

I thank you for thinking about this. The trouble it's taking for such a trifling repair isn't worth it, I'll just consider it One of Those Things.

[RoyGBiv]

33. One of those things ...

... that is driving me up the damn wall.

Been out of sorts the last couple days, so I haven't mentioned all I discovered with this.

I hadn't noticed this since I don't generally save my tabs when I exit FF at home. I've got it set to open several different pages in separate tabs, and session restore makes that obnoxious. So, I checked my Linux box, and sure enough there was no option to "save and quit."

Well, that just made me mad.

I'm running the same version of FF at work as I am at home. Yes, Options is Preferences and is under a different menu item, but that's the only real difference, or should be. So I'm thinking about this fact that between us we've got essentially three different "versions" of FF 3.5, yours, the portable one I use at work, and my Linux one. Both the Linux one and yours give no "save and quit" option, but the portable one does. So, that got me to thinking ... and I won't bore you with that process. Madness inhabits that cave.

I fixed it, but I'm not entirely sure how I fixed it. I thought I'd figured it out, changed *one* thing like you're supposed to do when troubleshooting software, but it didn't work. Then I just got frustrated and changed ten billion things all at once and, voila, the "save and quit" option was back.

I tried my best to backtrack, and as near as I can figure, this is what did it:

Under the Main section of Preferences/Options the setting "Firefox will ..." is set to "Show my homepage" by default. All the troubleshooting attempts say this is what it should be for the "save and quit" option to show, so I hadn't messed with it. Well, I did mess with it to make sure the session restore feature actually worked. That is, I changed this setting to "Firefox will show my windows and tabs from last time." That worked the way it is supposed to by automatically saving your tabs then opening them when you restart. But, that's not quite what we want. The solution I *thought* had was another about:config setting, but it wasn't.

During my period of frustration immediately following, I changed the "Firefox will ..." back to "Show my homepage." With all the other settings the way they should be (Warn when closing multiple is clicked, browser history is remembered, i.e. not in a private session) this worked.

HOWEVER, without changing anything (that I remember) after testing it several times, it suddenly stopped working. I toggled back and forth between "show homepage" and "show last time" and it started working again.

There's a bug here of some sort that I believe is caused by functions interfering with each other. What they are, I'm not sure, but there are a lot of people with this problem and no single solution, which suggests again that it's some hidden setting that gets toggled the right way in certain configurations and the wrong way in others.

[charlie]

34. Eeps!

Now I'm feeling bad for drawing you into this.

LOL at the "changed ten billion things all at once". Yep, I know all about that, and the elation/horror when it works.

I still haven't checked the plugins, I've got a number of pages I need to finish reading before doing a restart. I guess I'll get around to it today.

I don't think it'll be a plugin, but.... thinking about what you said about functions interfering with each other, I've got a whack notion of how it might be. Since plugins and browser chrome both use XUL and Javascript, maybe a plugin could introduce a namespace collision. Alls well for a time, until the plugin calls the function or object that improperly uses a reserved name, and the save on exit feature gets flipped.

I really appreciate this, Roy. But man, don't waste more time on it, I'm feeling guilty.

[RoyGBiv]

35. Oh, don't ...

My obsessions are my own. It's a puzzle.

I recently became obsessed with getting a multimedia program to work (dependency version problem and piss-poor packaging of the deb). Now that I have, I've not actually used it once.

If it weren't this, it'd be something else. At least this might have some utility.

To add a bit more that might (or might not) dovetail with the potential of a namespace issue, there's a setting called browser.tabs.warnOnOpen. (There's also warnOnClose.) By default warnOnOpen is set to "true," which according to some advice on this is what it should be for the "save on exit" to work. However, when I changed the behavior of Firefox opening to previous tabs and windows, it makes this "false." When I toggled it back to "homepage" it did *not* toggle it back to "true," yet the "save on exit" did appear.

However, when I manually changed it back to "true," the "save on exit" still appeared. This is set to "true" in the Windows portable browser I'm using here at work.

So, I dunno ...

I can't remember and don't have the wherewithal to go digging on the work computer at the moment ... Are the about:config settings saved in a .js file somewhere? If so, I could do a file comparison of before/after and see what changed.

[charlie]

36. I think this is it

It looks like the config file, anyway. In the folder where the browser is installed, not the other place where application data is stored, there's a folder called "greprefs". In it is a file called "all.js". It seems to be the one, but I'm not sure if it's a working file or a template for restoring defaults.

[Why Syzygy]

22. I get "save and quit" option. nt

[Why Syzygy]

14. I lived in El Paso

two years of high school. We had snow one Thanksgiving! But it wasn't a blizzard. That's a wowzer.

[charlie]

19. Former El Chuco-an!

And you escaped. Good for you! I'd hoped to never come back, but circumstance and a few odd twists of fate... and here I am. I like El Pasoans, I just don't think much of the city.

You'll know then, El Paso has no runoff drains on its streets. It does have dozens of huge flood control pits, empty reservoirs ready to soak up catastrophic torrents... but no way to get water into them, unless it rises above street level. So, the place floods anyway, it just doesn't get any higher than halfway up your car door. And the cross currents at intersections can drag your car sideways. Smart, dependable public safety planning. NOT.

[Why Syzygy]

21. Oh yeah.

Never missed the wind storms after leaving. I had more friends there than any other place I've lived. El Paso is one of the cities with a high Lithium content in the water :D It was in Tucson, though, that I backed my car into one of the rain ditches (they run right down the middle of the streets). Not a good idea. What do they call those things?

[charlie]

24. They're called shortcuts, if you're fearless

:D

Yeah, we consistently rank in the top slots for the US's safest cities, and the lithium may have a lot to do with that. It may also have something to do with El Paso being the Largest City Where Absolutely Nothing Happens :)

[Why Syzygy]

25. Unless

you count chasing jack rabbits through the desert in dune buggies :D

[charlie]

27. It counts

We'll take all we can get. We're hoping to import some cows soon, so we can include cow tipping as one of our attractions.

[RoyGBiv]

17. Dearlord ...

Y'all be careful.

We had about a 1/10 of an inch (maybe) that lasted, oh, about two hours in Houston last year. You'd think there had been an avalanche.

Drivers in Houston freak out if it gets damp when the temperature drops below 50.

[charlie]

20. Thanks. It doesn't get too dangerous

It's better to be here than there, in bad weather. El Pasoans are awful drivers, but it's mostly because they're indecisive poke-along mopes. They don't think their pickups are Maseratis with flatbeds, like out east.

The snow's turned to sleet and melted nearly all accumulation already. It was fun while it lasted. 2 months ago a hailstorm blew through and AllState alone had 200 million-some in damage claims afterward. The weather's been way different than it was when I was last here, more mercurial and extreme.

[Why Syzygy]

16. Right.

That's always been a bother. I'll copy into the message box to spell check sometimes. The error I caught was a status update at Facebook.

[pokerfan]

23. To enable spell checking in all text fields

http://www.firefoxfacts.com/2008/10/09/spell-check-all-text-fields-in-firefox

[Why Syzygy]

26. uber cool

:thumbsup:

[Why Syzygy]

29. Speed Dial

Is there anything to set up Firefox with a page similar to the Speed Dial page in Opera?

[charlie]

31. There's an addon

called, oddly enough, Speed Dial :)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810

[Why Syzygy]

32. You da man.

ty