[whatwg] Spellchecking proposal #2

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Jun 25, 2006, at 2:02 AM, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> ...
> However, the proposed spellcheck attribute has one major advantage 
> over all of those: it's being designed to allow the user to easily 
> override it if they want to.

But realistically, browsers won't "allow the user to easily override it 
if they want to", because any interface for doing that would be absurd. 
For example, in Opera:

     |  Select all         #A |
     |------------------------|
     |  Check spelling        |
     |  Really check spelling |
     |------------------------|

Teehee. Or in Safari (where the spellchecking interface is confusing 
enough already, thanks):

     |-----------------|
     |  Find          >|________________________________
     |::Spelling::::::>|  Spelling…                  #: |
                       |  Check Spelling             #; |
                       |/ Check Spelling as You Type    |
                       |--------------------------------|
                       |/ Spellcheck Sometimes          |
                       |__Spellcheck Always_____________|

Firefox doesn't seem to have a design for spellchecking published on 
their Web site yet. Maybe, if they're going to support a new attribute 
for authors to influence spellchecking, they'll expose it in the 
Preferences dialog:

     [/] Check my spelling in Web page forms
         [ ] Even if the page author disagrees

... Yeah, right. Bottom line, browser vendors will either ignore the 
attribute, or they'll make it configurable in a really obscure place 
(about:config or equivalent), and leave 99.9% of people wondering 
vaguely why spellchecking works on some pages and not others.

-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/