Why Firefox is Your Friend When You're Entering Data via Web Forms

July 09, 2008

Firefox has a built in spell checker for text area fields. The inline spell checking feature stops a lot of typos in their tracks.

But Firefox doesn't stop there. You can set up the browser to also spell check one line input fields like title of blog posts or title fields on your data entry form.

This feature is around in Firefox 2 and 3 and you need to dive into the about:config configuration.

Setting Up Firefox to Spell Check One Line Input Fields

Firefox has a large configuration file that you may never have seen. You can access this config file and change values from 0 to 1 or 2 and then the browser will do different things.

Let's change Firefox to spell check one line input fields.

Type about:config in the location or address bar where you usually type URLs and hit return.

This box will pop up. Just click "yes" I'll be careful. You will be careful, right?
Don't worry about the long list. You do not have to browse through the hundreds of config options. There is a box near the top that allows you to search for the spell check configuration line.

Type this in the box after the label, Filter:

layout.spellcheck

You should see a config line like the one above but your value won't say 2, yet.
Now, change the value to 2 by double clicking on the value field. A window will pop up and you can change the value to 2.
Click Okay.
Restart the browser, to have the spell checking work for one line fields. Any misspelled words will be underlined in red.