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Crossposted on Meta Stack Overflow:

Enable spell check on title, search and tag input element

I notice that I'm the only person on Gaming to misspell achievements in a question title: Super Meat Boy no-death achievements

This prevents my question from being searched for (try searching for the misspelled 'acheivements' and only my question pops up).

I haven't corrected the title yet to show that in both the preview and edit boxes there seems to be no spell-checking for question titles (notice the misspelling in the Title box):

Screen cap of the editing box

Can this feature be added?

Edit: I corrected my question title, the screencap is enough to show what the old problem was.

Sidenote: Related is spell-checking in the search box, but I'll submit that as another feature request.

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  • That's something browsers are supposed to support :) besides, now all users can propose edits.
    – badp
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:11
  • Aha, so it's not stackexchanges fault. But is there anything UI-wise that could be changed in order to help the browser realize that it should be spell-checking in there? I'm assuming they are two kinds of text boxes and only one gets a spell-checker.
    – Sadly Not
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:14
  • A related general feature from Meta Stack Overflow: Please add a spell checker to the markdown editor.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:16
  • @Grace Thank you, should the question be closed and a link to the related feature be posted?
    – Sadly Not
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:18
  • Can you provide perhaps a screenshot of the question body getting spellchecked but not the title block? And, no, this probably shouldn't be closed because you're asking less for in-engine spellchecking and more for better browser spellcheck support. So, to make this a more appealing feature-request, we should provide pictoral evidence that the spellcheck support is indeed lacking in this department.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:18
  • @Grace Chrome (maybe Firefox too?) only spell checks textarea fields, ignoring the single line input ones. However, it would be incorrect to have the title use a textarea. SO already "does it wrong" with comments, no need to make it worse.
    – badp
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:20
  • @badp Hmm... if that's the case... and I do agree that making the Title a textarea would be unwise. You should post that as an answer.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:21
  • Okay, so this is my browser's fault and arguably I should be responsible for changing my settings if that's a feature I want. As an answer can someone post a way to fix this in Firefox? I know very little about configuring my browser.
    – Sadly Not
    Commented Jan 31, 2011 at 18:25
  • Now posted as a MSO [feature-request]: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78230/… - go support it!
    – Private Pansy
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 15:00

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Chrome (maybe Firefox too?) only does spell checking on textarea fields, ignoring the single line input ones.

It would be however incorrect to have the title use a textarea control. The software already abuses this tag with comments, causing some amount of trouble, and then some more. There's no need to make it worse.

Besides, right now anybody on the internet who is offended by your typo may now submit an edit proposal to correct it. (This feature isn't yet official, or complete, or announced, but is nonetheless enabled as the team figures out how people actually would use it.)

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    Firefox too, indeed. However, in Firefox at least (not sure about Chrome), there is a 'Check Spelling' option in the context menu that overrides any settings and turns on (or off) spell check. You can also override browser defaults on the 'developer side' with spellcheck attribute
    – Private Pansy
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 14:24
  • @YiJ Yup, same on Chrome :) That smells of a feature request!
    – badp
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 14:26
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    In Safari, right-click in a text input and choose Spelling and Grammar > Check Spelling While Typing to enable for all text inputs.
    – CyberSkull
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 12:10

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