Spellchecker.net didn't work for me when posting this morning

December 27, 2001 9:58 AM

Spellchecker.net didn't work for me when posting this morning -- instead of a spellchecker window, I got this message:
Due to the current advertising climate, SpellChecker.net no longer offers a banner supported service. Webmasters: click here to sign up for the paid version of the SpellChecker.net system.
posted by daver to Bugs at 9:58 AM (29 comments total)

Anybody else having the same problem? Obviously, any interruption in the spellchecking service will make me look like an even bigger idiot that I do allredy.

I wonder how much it would cost us to get Matt a license... (see what I mean!?!)
posted by daver at 10:00 AM on December 27, 2001

Dang, Dave, ya beat me to it! An alternate is to do what I just did: open a new Word doc and cut-and-paste to it and spell check there. It's a lot faster, for one thing, and if you have a word not in Word's Spell Check, go to YourDictionary.Com--Word didn't have 'counterminous,' for example--and all these years I thought it was countermingous!--and I know from doing my show, it doesn't have 'zydeco' either. Pretty sucky but it's at least as good as Spellchecker was...
posted by y2karl at 10:19 AM on December 27, 2001

I could pay for a spellchecker.net licence or I could buy some coldfusion code that does the same. I'll try incorporating the evaluation version today and see how that works out.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:20 AM on December 27, 2001

h
posted by riffola at 10:37 AM on December 27, 2001

Hey, Matt---I'm not familiar with the custom tag you linked above, but at my job, we're using ActivEdit's spellchecker and it works like a charm---just don't try to run it on a Linux server (our app is CF-Linux, but we had to set up a Windows CF server just for the bloody spellchecker).

It's not free, but it's cheaper than the Forta tag, so worth a look perhaps?
posted by Sapphireblue at 10:38 AM on December 27, 2001

Oops that shouldn't have happend, ignore it :)
posted by riffola at 10:39 AM on December 27, 2001

Is this server linux based? If so, you can just use ispell... I'm pretty sure there's a CF hook for it, as well.
posted by ph00dz at 10:47 AM on December 27, 2001

Karl: conterminous?
posted by rodii at 10:53 AM on December 27, 2001

con·ter·mi·nous
adj.
Having a boundary in common; contiguous: The northern border of the United States is conterminous with the southern border of Canada.
Contained in the same boundaries; coextensive: the conterminous 48 states.
Having the same scope, range of meaning, or extent in time.
[From Latin conterminus : com-, com- + terminus, boundary.]

Thanks to Atomica, a cool system tray client that I highly recommend.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:59 AM on December 27, 2001

Ph00dz: Sorry, Win2K.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:17 AM on December 27, 2001

Not to beat an expensive horse, but since this is probably an unforseen expense, maybe we can find a way to chip in for the cost? Or are the text ads working out that well?
posted by daver at 11:49 AM on December 27, 2001

Now seems like the right time for another link to MeFi's Amazon Honor Payment page. :)
posted by Sapphireblue at 12:07 PM on December 27, 2001

What about AutoSpell™? It's a free banner based spellchecker for webapps.
posted by riffola at 12:13 PM on December 27, 2001

AutoSpell is ASP or Perl and Matt runs Coldfusion.
posted by geoff. at 12:26 PM on December 27, 2001

But Spellchecker was perl/cgi based too, therefore he can use AutoSpell.
posted by riffola at 12:54 PM on December 27, 2001

conterminous! I look it up and then ignore the first syllable's spelling.. Oy vey! Thanks, rodii.
posted by y2karl at 4:51 PM on December 27, 2001

On my community website --- ... resisting ... every ... urge ... to ... link ... to ... it ...! --- the loss of the spellcheck function was pretty much decided to be a non-event. Hardly anyone used it while we had it, and some users didn't even know the function was there (despite the SPELL CHECK button that used to be right next to the PREVIEW and SUBMIT buttons). I just finished yanking the code from the site.

I predict that the people who provided the banner-laden spell-check function for free will all be looking for new jobs very shortly.
posted by crunchland at 6:10 PM on December 27, 2001

how about some mac spellin support?
posted by ParisParamus at 7:09 PM on December 27, 2001

and a mac link toolbar, and a mac pony too...
posted by machaus at 7:22 PM on December 27, 2001

has anyone used autospell? I can't get it to work.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:32 PM on December 27, 2001

Can't get autospell to work, because the OPTIONAL website field/info when left blank leaves an error message, to paraphrase, "where is your URL???" when i have no website.
Then again, Metafilter offers me no spellcheck, link options either. I have only two posting options. "Preview" which does nothing (worthwhile). And "Post," which does, regretably, just that.
Requisite software envy spewing--
posted by G_Ask at 8:43 PM on December 27, 2001

How exactly did the spellchecker work? I don't think I ever used it (which probably explains a lot).

Aspell is a good open-source spell checking library. It also runs natively on Windows. I know there are PHP bindings for it, but I'm not sure about CF. If someone's running a PHP site, maybe they could set up a Spellchecker.net type of service for MetaFilter-referred requests. Perhaps we could collectively come up with some PHP code for this service.
posted by dlewis at 6:23 AM on December 28, 2001

Or everyone could just, um, learn to spell? Nah, crazy idea, forget I said anything....
posted by rushmc at 12:08 PM on December 28, 2001

rushmc, crazy indeed. Archaic spellings, contradicting rules, and inconsistency aren't things to be proud of. Maybe I'll start posting in simplified english.
posted by skallas at 2:05 PM on December 28, 2001

Some people can't spell! Think of the children.
posted by gleemax at 8:02 PM on December 28, 2001

Some people can't spell! Think of the children.

I agree that a lot of children can't spell. However, I think parents have an obligation not to let children post to MetaFilter until they can spell.
posted by kindall at 8:22 PM on December 28, 2001

Oh no, here we go again. Again.

*cringes*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:14 AM on December 29, 2001

now i hav an eksuse fer mi mispellllings. yay.

long liv cummunikashun!!!
posted by fuq at 4:59 PM on December 30, 2001

Fuck, just shut up. (I kill me.)
posted by gleemax at 10:21 PM on December 30, 2001