Tardis:Spell checking with Firefox

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T:FF SPELL

Making sure that your installation of Firefox spell checks in British English is vitally important on this wiki, since British spellings are required.

Version covered

This tutorial was verified as working in Firefox 14.0.1 for Mac. It probably will work for other versions, but it has not been extensively tested. Since the add-on is platform neutral, this tutorial applies to Windows and Linux users, too. However, there are some special notes for Mac users.

Instructions

1. Go to any page here at tardis.wikia.com that you have permission to edit
2. Choose to edit the page
3. Right click anywhere in the editing pane and pull down to Languages. Slide over to look at your installed dictionaries. If you have a British dictionary installed chose it: you're done! If not, proceed to the next step.
4. Select Add dictionaries
5. This will then take you to a page of Firefox add-ons called "Dictionaries & Language Packs"
6. Scroll down to the dictionary called English (British). Install it.
7. Restart Firefox, as prompted. You're done!

Mac users should edit in Safari

Global British spelling in Mac OS X is really solid and complete. The Firefox extension by Mark Tyndall (version 1.19.1) is not so good. It fails to take a stand on some of the most basic Trans-Atlantic spelling differences.

Moreover, the Firefox extension in no way offers auto suggestion, much less actual auto-correction. There is very little doubt that the Firefox British dictionary will produce more spelling errors than using Safari and taking advantage of the OS X native spell checking.

Here's an idea of the difference between the two spell check environments:

Word	Safari response	Firefox response
color, humor, fervor, neighbor	incorrect	incorrect
materialize, colonize, fraternize, hypnoitize	incorrect	no response (sees both -ize and -ise as correct)
organization	incorrect	incorrect (but organize is, confusingly, seen as a valid alternate spelling)
fulfill	incorrect	incorrect
install	correct (but instal is too — which is correct, according to the OED)	correct (but instal is not, even though it should be)

For this reason, it is strongly recommended that Mac editors who are not native British English speakers use Safari. Safari will simply correct more of your spelling errors than Firefox could possibly hope to do.

Nevertheless, we do still recommend you install this British English Dictionary to Firefox, mainly on the principle that some correction is better than none.