Live Spell Checker

As usual I’m using the word “Live” but go ahead to name it ajax, xmlhttprequest or dhtml, or …, and spellcheck, spell-check, spell_check, spellchecker, Spell Checker or… whatever.

Download the latest here.

Instructions:
Just copy into your plugin folder, activate and run it!
Edit config.php if needed ;)

Features:

0.6 - 10 July 2005

  1. Integration of Chris Meller’s Google Spellcheck webservice (http://dacnomm.com/googlespell/)
  2. Upgrade to the latest Garrison Locke spellcheck 2.2 (http://www.broken-notebook.com)
  3. Fix the resized textarea
  4. Addition of config.php
  5. Spot the difference here

0.5 - 5 July 2005

  1. More fixes to pspell
  2. Now Integrates Emil’s DHTML(&Rich Text) Spellchecker. Now words are spell checked while you type! Just like in office, dreamweaver, nvo…. For demonstration purposes, (to know how it works), try on this site.
  3. His server side scripts are ported to php

0.4-11 June 2005 -

  1. Added spell checking for comments

0.3-11 June 2005

  1. Adapts m0n5t3r’s WP plugin of Broken’s AJAX Spell Checker
  2. Updated its to Broken’s v1.7
  3. Fixs integrations and other small bugs

StoryLine:
Right from the 1st post in my blog I thought spellcheck was fairly important.

When I was (re)introduced to AJAX on the net, live spell check was 1 of my (not so orginal) idea again.

Finally a dose of dynamic spell checkers i discovered on the net in my latest post and also the motivation to improve the plugin.

Considerations:
Known problems

  1. You would need either pspell or aspell on your server
    Engine uses google as default, otherwise pspell or aspell needed
  2. Wont work with autosave or wysiwygs enabled
  3. TextArea gets resize during spell checks
    Layout alittle soiled in Tiger admin
  4. Surely there is more efficient methods for this spell checker
    Really, this plugin is a combination of scripts, we’ll see how good it goes
  5. Using”Check spelling” method strips off more and nextpage tags

Resolving them

  1. Disable AutoSave in the plugins
  2. As for WYSIWYG plugin, I currently use ChenPress, with some of my code to toggle it on when needed, so this spell checker works with it.
  3. Another solution for WYSIWYGs is to use plugins for them. Example there should be speller plugins for TinyMCE, Xihua, FCKeditor, so on.. The few, eg. old HTMLarea might be compatible with this plugin

Future improvements:

  1. Check/Correct as you type - Going in Emil’s Spell Checker’s direction could be great
  2. Suggest/prompt words while you are typing - Save typing like Eclipse autocomplete or Google suggest
  3. Ability to integrate with those WYSIWYG editors or checking spelling using any selection of a page just by highlighting with your mouse

Demo: Sorry I forget to add eariler. Just try any post and spellcheck is integrated in the comments field.

// Let me embed one using execphp here.
//
//spellcheck_head();
//spellcheck_ui();
//spellcheck_footer(’testspell’);
?>