Firefox Spellchecker Stopped Working

Posted June 8th, 2019, 5:36 pm

Hello,

My spell checker stopped working. The option is enabled, the dictionary is loaded and selected, the about:config seems to be correct...

The even crazier thing (at least to me) is that the other profile of firefox that I use has its spell checker working just fine.

But for this one... just stopped... no underlining no nothing.

My spelling is kinda bad so please help!!!

Posted June 9th, 2019, 3:22 am

Does it work again after restarting in Safe Mode?

For your spelling issue, see if your local school system offers a course in remedial spelling 101.
;-)

.

Posted June 9th, 2019, 9:02 am

therube wrote:For your spelling issue, see if your local school system offers a course in remedial spelling 101.
.

Never helped me... when I was going to grammar school and I took a spelling test and did not do good on it my mother went over the words with me... I had all the correct letters in the misspelled words but out of order. I told her that I did have all the correct letters so it should have been OK... I still live by that rule (my rule) ... that's why I also need a spelling aid :lol:

Posted June 9th, 2019, 3:41 pm

therube wrote:Does it work again after restarting in Safe Mode?

I will find out very shortly...

Update: And no... it didn't seem to do anything. Sorry. Any more ideas?

therube wrote:For your spelling issue, see if your local school system offers a course in remedial spelling 101.
.

I have mild dyslexia... which means spelling is not so very easy for me. Minus my dyslexia I went onto college, in fact the honors college, and I made pretty good grades.

Unless you have a cure for dyslexia...

dfoulkes wrote:
therube wrote:For your spelling issue, see if your local school system offers a course in remedial spelling 101.
.

Never helped me... when I was going to grammar school and I took a spelling test and did not do good on it my mother went over the words with me... I had all the correct letters in the misspelled words but out of order. I told her that I did have all the correct letters so it should have been OK... I still live by that rule (my rule) ... that's why I also need a spelling aid

That actually sounds a bit like dyslexia...

It is very common for persons with dyslexia to get vowels confused and out of order. Might want to consider getting tested or looking into it.

Posted June 10th, 2019, 4:53 am

about:config, check the value of layout.spellcheckDefault.
Presumably set to '1' (which should correspond to any GUI setting).

Other then that, & with seemingly no extension interfering... ?

Posted June 10th, 2019, 11:43 am

I prefer:
layout.spellcheckDefault = 2
ui.SpellCheckerUnderlineStyle = 4

You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages sub menu.
The spelling checker is enabled if "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu has a checkmark.

Posted June 10th, 2019, 2:44 pm

therube wrote:about:config, check the value of layout.spellcheckDefault.
Presumably set to '1' (which should correspond to any GUI setting).

Other then that, & with seemingly no extension interfering... ?

Yes, it was/is set to 1. I don't think there are any addons/extensions that could be causing the trouble.

It started working late last night again (it sometimes does start to work again without me doing anything to it) but after I restarted the computer this morning it had stopped again.

dickvl wrote:I prefer:
layout.spellcheckDefault = 2
ui.SpellCheckerUnderlineStyle = 4

You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages sub menu.
The spelling checker is enabled if "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu has a checkmark.

When I right click a typeable text area it does not show languages or anything like that... like it should... but in the options the spell checking as typing option is selected.

Posted June 10th, 2019, 4:13 pm

Are you using any add-in dictionaries or have you defined your own personal spellings?

As a test, create a new clean Profile.
Make no changes.
Open a board, like here.
Purposely misspell some words & see if they are noted.

If they are not, then there might be some program corruption.
(Now knowing that it may be an intermittent condition might make that a bit more difficult to determine.)
Anyhow, thought is that the spelling dictionaries are corrupt (or oddly, locked by some other application)?

Anyone know where dictionary files are stored in Quantum? Is it in one of the omni.jar?
(Earlier versions was like {program_install_dir}/dictionaries/en-US.dic.)

Looks like {program_install_dir}/omin.ja/dictionaries/.

Posted June 10th, 2019, 5:16 pm

therube wrote:Are you using any add-in dictionaries or have you defined your own personal spellings?

As a test, create a new clean Profile.
Make no changes.
Open a board, like here.
Purposely misspell some words & see if they are noted.

Yes, they are.

therube wrote:If they are not, then there might be some program corruption.

The new profile did show the red lines.

therube wrote:(Now knowing that it may be an intermittent condition might make that a bit more difficult to determine.)

Sorry.

therube wrote:Anyhow, thought is that the spelling dictionaries are corrupt (or oddly, locked by some other application)?

I do not know. How would I check that? I do not think any other application would 'lock' it? And the spelling dictionaries... I did load a few others onto firefox some time back when I was trying to practice some other languages but I have since removed them. I also did a few addons for spelling and grammar LONG ago... but they have been since disabled and/or removed. And the issues happened long after that.

One of the first ways I tried to approach this matter is simply reinstalling the dictionary...

therube wrote:
Anyone know where dictionary files are stored in Quantum? Is it in one of the omni.jar?
(Earlier versions was like {program_install_dir}/dictionaries/en-US.dic.)

Looks like {program_install_dir}/omin.ja/dictionaries/.

I am not aware of how this relates.

Posted June 11th, 2019, 1:16 pm

Some websites can disable the Firefox spelling checker via the spellcheck="false" attribute on the input or textarea tag, but this shouldn't happen on all web pages like this forum.
You can check this in the Inspector.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Too ... _Inspector

Does opening a new window has any effect?

Posted June 11th, 2019, 5:48 pm

dickvl wrote:Some websites can disable the Firefox spelling checker via the spellcheck="false" attribute on the input or textarea tag, but this shouldn't happen on all web pages like this forum.
You can check this in the Inspector.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Too ... _Inspector

Does opening a new window has any effect?

No.

Posted June 16th, 2019, 6:14 am

A little update...

I copied my default profile into a new folder and made it a new profile instance.

I tried to load it up in a new window... the spell check worked just fine.

I then tried to set it as default and load firefox normally... spell check didn't work.

I modified the shortcut command to load directly that profile... didn't work.

I removed it as default and tried to load it again... didn't work...

I created a new shortcut like I did before and loaded to that copied default profile. Works.

Firefox Spellchecker Stopped Working

Who is online