Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has acquired a spiffy spellchecker called After The Deadline. It's now available on Wordpress blogs, and you can enable it in the Wordpress visual editor by clicking the ABC button with the green checkmark (If you're using a WordPress.org install, get the plugin). After the Deadline is smarter than the spellcheckers we're used to in desktop apps, because it analyzes the millions of posts on Wordpress.com to create context and get things like proper names right.

After the Deadline finds a lot of mistakes that other spellcheckers won't. If you use "new" instead of "knew," for example, ATD will know whether you've got the right one in context. It can also check for clichés, double-negatives, passive voice, and other problems that generally weaken your writing. ATD also gives you fine-tuned control over those stylistic elements: you can have it stop checking for certain problems, or teach it to ignore your intentional, but technically incorrect, word choices. ATD only works with English right now, but other languages are in the works.

[via TechCrunch]

One of my favorite new features in Firefox 2.0 is the inline, as-you-type spell-check. I'm a pretty good speller, but everyone makes mistakes, and as a blogger it's great to have a spell-check feature that has my back but stays out of my way. Still, I've been occasionally surprised by the words Firefox doesn't have in its dictionary. Firefox of course allows you to add words to its dictionary by right-clicking on the word and choosing "Add to dictionary," and the words you add are stored in your "personal dictionary" file PERSDICT.DAT, which lives in your profile folder. After using Firefox 2 Beta 1 for a few weeks, I decided to poke around in it and see what words I had collected, and below you can find my 43 favorite words Firefox doesn't know.

aggregator ahold API app blog blogger dialogue Digg DIY DNS doppelganger filmmaking Firefox Google IM

inline iPod JavaScript malware megapixel Moleskine Mozilla multitasker nerdcore offline okay onboard online Photoshop podcast

PVR screencast screenshot spamming tarnation taskbar timeline toon USB VoIP webcomic weblog wiki

You'll observe that many of them are technical terms, trade names, and neologisms, and I certainly don't fault Firefox for omitting them from its dictionary. I'm most amused, though, that "Mozilla" and "Firefox" aren't part of its vocabulary, though. Have you been using Firefox 2? Do you have any interesting entries in your PERSDICT.DAT? Post them in the comments below!

Mozilla has released a 2nd alpha version of Firefox 2.0. As usual, this release is not recommended for any kind of serious use, but if you're salivating at some of the new version's features, check out what has been incorporated in this 2nd development milestone:

• Links default to opening in new tabs, not new windows
• Close buttons now appear on every tab, and the close behavior is slightly different
• Inline spell checking in text boxes (Works well, though apparently not on all sites yet)
  
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
• Search suggestions now appear in the search box auto-complete for Google and Yahoo!
• New search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks (Really interesting new feature)
  
• New Add-Ons manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• New search service that supports Sherlock and OpenSearch engines
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

A mouthful, I know. I typed this post using this development version (Bon Echo, as they call it) on Mac OS X and I have to say, it's nice so far. Of course, none of my extensions were compatible, and I highly recommend backing up your Firefox app support folder before testing this, no matter what OS you're using. When I tried the last Bon Echo development version, it rendered my support folder incompatible with the latest stable release of Firefox. Just another one of those hazards of playing with dev editions.

If you want more details of this release, check out its download page and Mozilla's release notes.

[via diggdot.us]