FF 68: Change default spelling dictionary

Mr David · Post by **Mr David** » July 17th, 2019, 11:44 pm

My FF installation has three language packs or spelling dictionaries installed:
English (Australia)
English (United Kingdom)
English (United States)

To change the default language pack or dictionary, in previous versions of FF used by me I have right clicked a misspelled word flagged by red underlining, then selected my preferred default language from the list in the context menu. That was sufficient to set a preferred language pack and have it remain the default from one session to another.

Every time I try this in FF 68, after reboot or log-out/log-in the default language has been reset to English (United States).

Web searches to find a permanent fix have been fruitless in finding a method that works.

Can anyone at Mozillazine suggest a reliable way to set the default language in FF 68?

Brummelchen · Post by **Brummelchen** » July 18th, 2019, 6:41 am

firefox is losing dictionary setting? not here. running my own and is set. possible that your browser language is presetting dictionary. but there exist none switch on AMO. what about a fresh profile to reproduce? maybe its a bug!? -> bugzilla.

Post by **James** » July 18th, 2019, 2:09 pm

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ho ... ll-checker

Note the inline spellchecker in Firefox only uses the Dictionaries as the Language packs are a way to have one Firefox install and be able to change the language of the UI or User Interface.

from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/language-tools/

Language packs change your browser's interface language, including menu options and settings.

If you want to still make use of the Language Packs you installed then see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/us ... r-language

Mr David · Post by **Mr David** » July 18th, 2019, 3:25 pm

Thanks, James, for taking the trouble to bring those links to FF help pages together in your post. I have previously referred to these pages (and others too) when trying to get the FF spell check behaviour I want but did not search to include them in my opening post to this thread.

There is possibly a clue to the issue I'm experiencing here:

James wrote:from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/language-tools/
Language packs change your browser's interface language, including menu options and settings.

English (United Kingdom) and English (United States) each have a Language Pack and a Dictionary listed on this page. English (Australia) has only a Dictionary listed.

When following the guide here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/us ... r-language
...only Language Packs can be selected. When the browser is restarted, language settings default to the Language Pack that has been been moved to the top of the list. Note that English (Australia) has no language pack, and it doesn't appear on the FF language settings screen.

If during a browser session I change the spelling dictionary to English (Australia) via the context menu, after the browser has been restarted the spelling dictionary changes to that of the default language pack.

I want to have English (Australia) as the default spelling dictionary when the browser restarts. This used to be a simple change for me to make when using older versions of FF. It isn't with this latest version. How can I effect this change in FF 68 without having to reset the spelling dictionary in every new browser session?

Mr David · Post by **Mr David** » July 25th, 2019, 9:34 am

This problem has previously been reported to Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1250009

Workaround that does the trick:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1228800

dickvl · Post by **dickvl** » July 25th, 2019, 7:15 pm

Websites can specify a language via the html or a meta tag tag as the preferred language for their website.
This website specifies lang="en-gb" for some reason for me if I check the page source (Ctrl+U).
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb" />

Firefox should store the language (dictionary) you use on a web page as part of the Site Preferences.
This obviously won't work in Private Browsing mode or if you clear the Site Preferences.

Mr David · Post by **Mr David** » July 25th, 2019, 7:47 pm

dickvl wrote:Websites can specify a language via the html or a meta tag tag as the preferred language for their website.
This website specifies lang="en-gb" for some reason for me if I check the page source (Ctrl+U).

Same here.
But in my instance, with English (US) set as the default language pack (could not set English (Aus) since it only has dictionary, not language pack), when drafting posts to this forum it was that spelling dictionary that the site defaulted to, even though coincidentally I had the English (UK) language pack installed also.

dickvl wrote:Firefox should store the language (dictionary) you use on a web page as part of the Site Preferences.This obviously won't work in Private Browsing mode or if you clear the Site Preferences.

I've been using private browsing mode at all times with FF for a long while.

Until recently I was stuck with 52.9.0esr. I exclusively used private browsing sessions then too. Selecting and setting the default spelling dictionary wasn't affected by private browsing. With that FF release and others preceding it, setting and selecting my preferred spelling dictionary was a simple, one-off, set and forget part of setting up FF. No workaround was required. However, workaround cited above is elegant and easy to do.

FF 68: Change default spelling dictionary

FF 68: Change default spelling dictionary

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