Firefox: Enable Spellchecking in Single Line Fields

Motivation

Good writing is key for a software developer as I stated in Writing as a complementary skill for your SW engineering career

So when you are writing a lot of texts in the browser e.g. in a wiki or an issue tracker you definitely want a spellchecker enabled.

For some reasons Firefox distinguishes between multi line checking and single line spell checking.

In your daily life you want to have both, so let’s enable it.

Prerequisites

Dictionary

To be able to use the spell checking functionality you need to install a dictionary from

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/language-tools/

e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/german-dictionary-de_de-for-sp/ for German

Caveat: You need a dictionary not a language pack!

Enable spell checking

Go to Settings -> General and enable “Check your spelling as you type”

Let’s enable checking for single-line controls

In Firefox You can do enable Spellchecking for Single Line Fields via a config value.

1. Type “about:config” into navigation bar
2. Accept the “I will be careful” reminder
3. Search for “layout.spellcheckDefault”
4. Double click on entry
5. Set value to 2

This will enable the spellchecker for multi-line controls and single-line controls.