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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Spell check with Google toolbar in Internet Explorer to overcome broken Blogger spell check

I have used the spell check icon in the Firebox Google toolbar to check spelling in Blogger post editor and found it superior compared with could be done with the Blogger built-in spell check in Blogger's post editor, especially before Blogger was replaced with Blogger Beta, then became New Blogger of just plain Blogger (just why don't Blogger introduce versions so we don't have to refer to old classic Blogger and New Blogger as even sometimes calling a blog using the old classic Blogger template in New Blogger is different from the really old version of Blogger as with that, you can have labels, which the really old version of Blogger don't have)

Unfortunately, that don't work anymore with FireFox 2.o anymore and you cannot get FireFox 1.5 anymore. So I have to resort to the Blogger built-in spell check which is not my preferred choice. Now even that doesn’t work anymore. I have tested that with 6 browsers - Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera, Flock, Netscape Navigator and Avant.

I have resorted to a more tedious Workaround for broken Blogger spell check (click BACK button to get back to this page).

Spell check with Google toolbar in Internet Explorer

Since the Blogger built-in spell check is broken, one day I tried doing spell check with the Internet Explorer Google tool bar by clicking on the spell check icon: (before you start spell check, you will see the word "Check". What you see now is "Stop" which will revert you post editor window to normal mode).

You can see the misspelled word in red, the corrected misspelled word in green, and when you click on a highlighted misspelled word (red in color), you will get a drop-down menu with suggestion of various possible correct spelling, one option to edit there and then, one more to "Ignore all", and this useful option - "Add to dictionary". This will be particularly useful if you frequently use words not in their dictionary, especially if you happen to be in a multilingual country and frequently use non-English words.

spell check with Google toolbar in Internet Explorer

Monday, February 4, 2008

Blogger spell check broken: Work-around

The built-in spell check in Blogger post editor no longer works. I have tested it in 6 browsers - Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 2.0, Netscape Navigator, Opera, Flock, Avant. When you click on the spell check Blogger spell check icon icon, nothing will happen, no matter how many times you click. But don't fret. There is a workaround.

Workaround for Blogger's broken spell check

Very simple. Prepare your post in the Blogger post editor as usual. When finished, press ctrl+A to highlight the whole post, then ctrl+C to copy into clipboard. Open MS WORD, and paste the post into the WORD file. Click "Tools" in the menu bar at the top and select "Check spelling and grammar". When done, press ctrl+A again to highlight the whole of the corrected post, press ctrl+C to copy into clipboard, open a Notepad file, paste into the Notepad file to strip off all the extra formatting that WORD has added to your post. Click ctrl+A and ctrl+C once more to highlight the whole post minus the formatting and copy into clipboard. Go back to the Blogger post editor. The whole uncorrected post should still be highlighted. Just press the "Delete" key to clear the post editor window, press ctrl+V to paste the corrected post into the post editor window. Add labels if you want, preview then click "Publish Post". Done.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Comments: Not getting email notifications

You can set your blog comments to notify you by email when a visitor comment in your blog by typing in an email address (recently they have changed that to up to ten email addresses) in the "Comment Notification Email" field:

Blogger comment notification email

You can also set to allow anyone to comment, only users with Google (used to be Blogger) account, only members of the blog. Recently a third choice was added - Registered Users - includes OpenID.

Almost all my blogs have comments set for moderation, so I never set it to send comment notification as I get notification for comment moderation and the comments are there, for me to save if I want. If I add notification for new comments, I will be getting double notifications. So I do not really have real life experience with getting email notifications for comments. But recently, a blogger had complained about not getting notification for comments. I can only refer him to my experience and that if I don't get some email notification for comment moderation, it is no big surprise to hear that other bloggers are also not getting some email notification for comments.

However, you may be interested in reading about my experience and problems with respect to this comment notification business and how I deal with it. At the bottom of the post, you will also see my advice as to what to do if you are not getting some email notification for comments.

Not getting email notification for comment moderation (click BACK button to get back to this page)

Moderate comments via email notification: advantages and problems (click BACK button to get back to this page)

Moderating comments from Dashboard plus problems.

I have been bugging Blogger support for a long time and the problem still exist.

If this is troubling you, I would suggest you set comments for moderation, and if you add an email address to be notified of comments waiting for moderation, but don't get some of them, at least you can see them in the Dashboard.