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September 1, 2011

Chrome's Spell Checker Gets Smarter

Just like Firefox, Chrome doesn't have a smart spell checker. It uses a dictionary and it shows spelling suggestions for the words that aren't included in the dictionary. Chrome's suggestions aren't always great because they ignore the context.


Google has an excellent spell checker that's used in Google Search, but Chrome's team avoided using it because of privacy concerns. It seems that Google changed its mind and some of Chrome's spelling suggestions will be obtained from Google's "did you mean" service.


A future update will "integrate the Spelling service (a.k.a. 'Did you mean') to a context-menu of Chrome so we can see the spell-check result retrieved from the Spelling service. This change sends a JSON-RPC request to the service in the background and updates a context-menu item." Even if the suggestions can't be displayed instantly, they're a lot better than the suggestions generated by Chrome. An even better idea would be to provide an option to spell check the entire text using Google's online service.
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16 comments:

  1. TomSeptember 1, 2011 at 2:05 PM

    Also, please synchronize my personal word list between my chrome instances, e.g. the same way that bookmarks or passwords are synchronized.

    ReplyDelete
  2. shogunSeptember 1, 2011 at 2:29 PM

    +1 on tom's comment

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 1, 2011 at 3:20 PM

    Genius! Now, even when I use Hotmail to send a personal email, Google still gets a copy of it. You know, to check that I typed everything correctly.

    Thanks Google!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alex ChituSeptember 1, 2011 at 3:40 PM

    It's a feature that can be disabled (I don't know if it will be enabled by default) and you need to right-click on a misspelled word to send an excerpt from the text to Google's servers.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownSeptember 1, 2011 at 10:57 PM

    And of course using Hotmail means your mail is completely safe and secure from the evil corporate overlords, because Microsoft has such a stellar record on privacy and security.

    Seriously, avoiding Gmail because you're paranoid about Google, and then turning to Hotmail, makes no sense.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownSeptember 1, 2011 at 11:26 PM

    I always wonder why this was not available years ago. Google been slowly connecting Chrome to its internet services so I guest this was expected.

    Hopefully they will allow us to connect to other on-line spelling systems. Also it be good if other browsers can connect to Google service.

    ReplyDelete
  7. DavideSeptember 1, 2011 at 11:32 PM

    ..now, if only it would finally recheck the text when one switches language.
    Chrome's spell checker is extremely annoying for those that use more than one language.
    Ideally it should automatically detect a language or a mix of languages, but it would be already great to get rid of the red underline upon manual switch.

    ReplyDelete
  8. SpletniAgentSeptember 1, 2011 at 11:58 PM

    Google must also fix a problem with spell checker described here:

    http://74.125.159.132/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=593f524efbb155a3&hl=en

    I'm waiting for this fix for a looooong time ...

    ReplyDelete
  9. shle896September 2, 2011 at 4:42 AM

    I'd be lost without the "After The Deadline" http://goo.gl/MCKlF extension.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousSeptember 2, 2011 at 11:31 AM

    Sounds good! I hope the Chrome dev team will also fix the ghost Australian dictionary in the right-click spell-checker menu.

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  11. allan dewsSeptember 3, 2011 at 3:37 AM

    one request to Google ... can you somehow display acronym and synonym in Chrome ? .. much like the Microsoft Word style... it is very useful for ordinary people like me ...

    ReplyDelete
  12. IanSeptember 3, 2011 at 12:58 PM

    Now if only it could automatically recognise the language I'm typing in without me having to switch manually each time...

    ReplyDelete
  13. MothSeptember 4, 2011 at 4:10 PM

    "And of course using Hotmail means your mail is completely safe and secure from the evil corporate overlords, because Microsoft has such a stellar record on privacy and security."

    ++++++++++++1 (a google times!)

    ReplyDelete
  14. FrankSeptember 5, 2011 at 10:09 PM

    Chrome's spell checker is similar to any other browser. However, Google has a better algorithm that they are using in Google Search.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sert erinSeptember 8, 2011 at 10:50 AM

    Hi Ian,

    that's the feature that i looking for, but i think to some extent, Google already do that,

    if we have the result in other language, Google will offer to translate it to English, that's mean Google know what the language is, but only if it can be incorporated in the writing feature.. that will be awesome.

    no need to switch again

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousOctober 2, 2011 at 10:38 PM

    To the guy that is worried about Google having a copy of stuff.. if you are doing what you should no worries right... Whaaa Waaa WAAAAAA!!! LOL

    ReplyDelete

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