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How can I spell check web pages when browsing them? I've added the After the Deadline Chrome extension, but it only seems to work on forms and not whole web pages. I'm happy to use Firefox if that provides a solution.

4
  • 1
    Why do you want to do this? Are they your own pages?
    – ChrisF
    Oct 5, 2011 at 12:44
  • 1
    Yes, they are my pages. Does it make any difference?
    – thomas
    Oct 5, 2011 at 12:46
  • Yes - you should spell check the content in what ever program you are using to create the web pages.
    – ChrisF
    Oct 5, 2011 at 12:47
  • 3
    I pull in content from a few different files to build up each web page. I'd like to do a check of the pages displayed to make sure I haven't missed anything.
    – thomas
    Oct 5, 2011 at 12:52

6 Answers 6

8

In Chrome, open the console by pressing Ctrl + Shift + J. In the console, type the following and hit Enter.

document.body.contentEditable = true;
document.designMode = 'on';

This will make the page editable and the built-in spell checker of Chrome will be able to highlight anything misspelled.

3
  • How is the console invoked? Jul 9, 2018 at 8:44
  • In chrome hit Ctrl + Shift + J for Windows OS and for Mac OS hit Cmd + Shift + J Jul 10, 2018 at 5:44
  • It works for Firefox as well.
    – MakotoE
    May 11, 2023 at 1:41
4

Use the bookmarklet from Switched.com: how-to-spell-check-any-web-site-using-firefox

You can drag-n-drop the bookmarklet link on your bookmarks bar.
You may have to drag-select the content of your page to force refresh spell check on the website's content.

Works in Chrome.

2
  • The link is broken, it redirects to a gadget website...
    – Calmarius
    May 14, 2016 at 8:44
  • Dead link, doesn't work
    – Jonny Lin
    Apr 21, 2017 at 2:14
2

I have found out a way to do it.

First you need to make the content editable:

document.body.contentEditable = true;
document.designMode = 'on';

Then as you are proofreading the page, select the text you want to spellcheck, then Ctrl+X to cut and Ctrl+V to insert it back. This should trigger the spellchecking of that block of text.

2
  • Where and how should "document.body.contentEditable = true;" be used? It looks like JavaScript code, but is it in about:config? Jul 9, 2018 at 8:40
  • @PeterMortensen You should type it to the javascript console of your browser.
    – Calmarius
    Jul 9, 2018 at 9:36
1

LanguageTool (for Chrome, for Firefox) can do that. Select the text and click on the "LT" in the browser's toolbar to check static text. Text that you write yourself into forms gets checked automatically. (Disclosure: I'm the author of these add-ons).

1
  • This does work. However, it requires pinning another icon to the toolbar, selecting text (sometimes the page is long, and Ctrl+A picks up parts of the page I don't need), then clicking a toolbar button, then clicking a button within the dropdown, which copies the text and opens it, out of context, in a new tab on languagetools.com. Then, when I find problems, I have to try to find the same place on the original site. It's not useful for finding errors within the original site context, which is my use case.
    – M_M
    Feb 29 at 12:06
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I can recommend SpellcheckEverything extension for Firefox. I’s very simple – it just forwards all the work to the spellchecker used for textareas in forms.

Inside, it works pretty much like this well-known bookmarklet:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true';document.designMode='on';void%200

From SpellcheckEverything @ Mozilla Addons, with typos fixed:

This add-on brings the body-tag of the current webpage into the contendEditable-mode. Thus the whole page will be treated as editable content and therefore the whole text will be spellchecked.

The add-on requires the Firefox-Spellcheck-Feature to be enabled. You will also need download the language files for the Firefox-Spellcheck-Feature.

This only applies to version 0.2 which is available by clicking on "Versions" before it will get reviewed: A "SpellCheck" button will appear in the statusbar. A click on that button will enable SpellcheckEverything and indicate the status by changing its color to green. Turn it off by a second click on that button.

Kudos to How can you check spelling on an existing webpage? @ Mozilla Support. Without that Q&A, I would miss this addon.

3
  • This doesn't work in FF53
    – Jonny Lin
    Apr 21, 2017 at 2:21
  • This only spellchecks what you write or modify in FF. Not the entire webpage that's already written.
    – Calmarius
    Jul 8, 2017 at 15:14
  • Seems this extension is abandonware. Last version is from 2011. I don't use it anymore, either. I found I don't need this functionality enough to search for a replacement.
    – Palec
    Jul 8, 2017 at 15:48
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Use Spell Checker (it hasn't been updated for newer versions of Firefox).

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  • 1
    This plugin is insanely slow for long content.
    – Calmarius
    Nov 23, 2012 at 12:35
  • 1
    This doesn't work in FF53
    – Jonny Lin
    Apr 21, 2017 at 2:22

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