Spellbound

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on January 10, 2011

We have to admit, we were a little dubious about Spellbound at first, because we're generally quite happy with the built-in spell check functionality of Firefox. Did we really need a Firefox add-on that, at first glance, seemed like it would do nothing more than duplicate a feature that Firefox already has? As it turns out, Spellbound is a little bit different. Just different--and useful--enough for us to like it.

Most Firefox users are no doubt quite familiar with the way that Firefox handles misspelled words; they're underlined in red, and right-clicking reveals suggested spellings in the Context menu. Spellbound adds another option to the Context menu: clicking on Spell Check with Spellbound brings up a small interface that can handle not only solitary misspelled words but entire blocks of text. Spellbound suggests corrections for misspelled words, which it can automatically insert into the original text. Users can have the add-on replace all instances of a misspelled word, or ignore all instances. Spellbound also lets users add words to their personal dictionaries. The default language of Spellbound is U.S. English, but other languages can be downloaded as well. The extension's options for customization are fairly limited, but we liked that Spellbound lets users specify the color of correct and incorrect text, as well as text background colors. Overall, we think that Spellbound is a nice addition to Firefox's built-in spell check feature; the ability to quickly check and correct an entire block of text is definitely a useful tool.