Set Australian English Spell Checking in Firefox

[Guest davidh10]

Being Australian, I find the constant highlighting of correctly spelled Australian / British English words as being incorrect and their correction being to American English a bit annoying. Given my day job is in Information Technology , I often have to spell words incorrectly in order to have things work as expected :raise_eyebrow: but while we have to be tolerant of other versions of spelling, it does not mean we need to promote the use of American spelling among fellow Australians.

 

It is with this in mind that I am posting the method to set your Firefox browser spell checker to "Australian English".

 

If you are looking for instructions for the Google Chrome web browser, they are here.

 

It's a multi-step process and not intuitive or covered in the Firefox help pages. This method is tested with Firefox Version 3.6

 

To check your version, open Firefox and from the menu select Help-->About Mozilla Firefox. The resulting window will reveal the version number.

 

Method

 

1. Open Firefox.
    
    
   
2. Navigate to a page that will show you a multi-line text input box. This may be a form or could be your favourite forum (possibly RecreationalFlying).
    
   If using a forum, you will need to open a Post (either an existing Post, in edit mode or a new Post, it doesn't matter. If creating a new Post specifically for this purpose, it isn't necessary to save it, and it will be lost when restarting Firefox in subsequent steps).
    
    
   
3. Find a word that has different spelling in Australian versus American English. eg. organisation, colour, dialogue... If it is a new Post, then write a few words. The objective is to trigger the spelling checker to mark a correctly spelled Australian English word as being incorrectly spelled (indicated by the red underline).
    
    
   
4. Right click the highlighted spelling error to get a spelling context menu.
    
    
   
5. Move your mouse over the "Languages" context menu item and a sub-menu will open.
    
    
   
6. In the sub-menu, the dictionary in use has a tick next to it and any other dictionaries that are installed are listed without a tick.
    
    
   
7. If you have an English / Australia dictionary listed skip to Step 13.
    
    
   
8. To select and install an English / Australia dictionary, select the "Add Dictionaries" sub-menu item. This will open a new Tab in Firefox and navigate it to a secure site at "addons.mozilla .org", where dictionaries and language packs are listed.
    
    
   
9. Scroll to find the "English (Australian)" entry and click on the "Install Dictionary" link. You will be taken to the download page for the Australian English Dictionary Extension.
    
    
   
10. Click the "Download" button to fetch the dictionary. You will be prompted to verify the installation.
     
     
    
11. Once installed, you need to close down Firefox and restart it (you will be prompted to do so, but can defer it). The new dictionary will not be available until you restart Firefox (this means closing ALL open Firefox windows).
     
     
    
12. Once Firefox is restarted, repeat steps 2. to 5. above and you should now see the "English / Australian" dictionary as a selectable item.
     
     
    
13. Click on the "English / Australian" item in the sub-menu to select this dictionary.
     
     
    
14. Restart Firefox to activate the selection.
     
     
    

 

 

Congratulations You are all done.

 

This selection will now be remembered.

 

Note: The selection of preferred language for display of web pages at Tools-->Options-->Content-->Languages has nothing to do with spell checking. It is for selecting the preferred language where a web server has multiple language versions of the same web page.

 

 

[Admin]

 

 

[Guest JRMobile]

Ditto

Cheers

 

John

 

 

[Tracktop]

Any more good tips David?

 

:big_grin::big_grin::big_grin::big_grin:

 

 

[winsor68]

Can I do it for Google Chrome?

 

 

[Spin]

Buy that man a drink!:thumb_up:

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

Can I do it for Google Chrome?

I'm sure you can, but I don't use Chrome due to the Privacy Terms that Google imposes.

 

Google get enough info from / about me without getting every URL I enter into the browser as well as every search. By the way, Google Toolbar does the same, so I don't use that either.

 

If I have time, I might install it on a virtual machine, just to answer this question and then blow it away again.

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

Can I do it for Google Chrome?

Ok. It is done. The instructions for Google Chrome have been posted as a new thread, here.