When Mozilla launched Firefox 2, they included a built in spell checker, which is kind of awesome if you spend a lot of time entering text in a web-based email, blogging, or word processing application. But for some reason, the Firefox spell checker only looks at large text areas, like the body of your email or blog post. The title fields aren't checked by default. And that's why your blog posts and email subject lines always look so awful. (We'll admit this has bitten us in the behind a few times as well)

But it turns out that enabling spell check for all text fields is pretty easy.

1. Open up the Firefox configuration window by typing about:config in your URL bar
2. Type layout.spellcheckDefault in the filter box
3. Change the value from 1 to 2

That's it. Now open up any window with a text box and misspell a word. Firefox should underline it in red, and when you right click on the word you should get spelling suggestions.

These days everything from word processors to web browsers to instant messaging clients have on the fly spell checking features. As you mistype a word, a red line or other indicator pops up to let you know that your word isn't in a dictionary. Try writing about websites with names like Flickr and Meebo on a regular basis and you'll see those little red lines so often you'll start dreaming about them.

But some applications don't have spell checkers. For example, Windows Notepad and Wordpad. So what if you need to jot down a quick note and want to make sure it's properly spelled? Or what if your web browser or IM client doesn't have a spell checker?

TinySpell is a light weight application that will alert you with a beep if you misspell a word. Now matter what application you're using. The application rests in your toolbar and does pretty much nothing most of the time, but beeps like a maniacal beeping thing when you start typing made up words. Click on the icon to see a list of possible spellings.

Interestingly, "tinySpell" is not in it's dictionary. But fortunately it's quite simple to add words. If you'd rather not hear a beep every few seconds when you're writing the business plan for your new Web 2.0 business, you can also set tinySpell only to check words when you copy them to your clipboard.

TinySpell is freeware, but there's also a commercial version, tinySpell+ with additional features like the ability to check for capitalization errors and remember your last error. Prices for tinySpell+ start at $7.

[via gHacks]