It's probably asking a lot, but it would be nice to have a simple spelling checker that would audit your reply before you posted it. I have a lot of trouble with transposing letters ("have" comes out "ahve" etc.), which probably explains why I can't play an English and it would be nice to have somethign catch all these typos before I post, and then have to go back and edit it to fix them (they're hard to spot in the raw text editing mode).

I can imagine typing your reply in another window in Word or AOL, then pasting it in, but that gets awkward if you're quoting a lot of text.

BTW, how about some kind of auditing for unbalanced quote tags?
--Mike K.

You'll be much more likely to be heard by Those Who Can Change These Things if you post on the Invisionboard forums. As a web board admin, there's not really anything to be done about implementing new features and improving the software.

http://forums.invisionpower.com/ is the place to go.

If spelling is a problem, could I suggest that you open your word processor at the same time, type your message in there and copy and paste it into the forum

Pete

Works pretty well unless and until you want to use the Forum editor's toolbar and highlight controls. Something italicized in Word won't automatically copy into the Forum editor with appropriate tags around it, and things like URL's and color are even more difficult.

Yes I was thinking more of the actual spelling rather than the formatting. But if just the spellchecker in Word or whatever word processor is being used, does the basic job then that is a whole lot better than before without it. However I have found that after inserting the text and then blocking the bits you want to edit or highlight etc. the forum tools seem to work OK.

In the composition window as I see it, there's an icon at the right end which says (in its "hint"), "Close all tags". I'm about to test it by copying further text from your post, inserting a few random opening tags, then clicking on that icon.

OUCH!! Not helpful! In fact, it appears not to work.

In the above, I've turned red what I entered as the test, so you can see where it begins and ends. I tried it first with an unbalanced italic tag, and it put a closing tag where my cursor was positioned. I then added some unbalanced quote tags, and when I clicked on the icon it did nothing, not even close the freshly unbalanced italic tag. Several additional attempts, including a recreation of the original, and it seems to have stopped trying to do anything. It didn't even recreate the first response.

Not that I would expect such a "feature" to be actually useful, since it's highly unlikely that it would insert a closing tag anywhere near where it should be placed, and if careless editing has produced a situation with more closing tags than opening ones, there should be no way for the software to intuit even where to place opening tags, much less what information to add to (e.g.) an opening quote tag to identify its source. (I first put these last three paragraphs after the test text, but the unbalanced tags in the test just shifted the lack of balance into the following text, upsetting my intended formatting. So I had to move this text above the test in order to keep the behaviors separate. )

[quote]It's probably asking a lot, but it would be nice to have a simple spelling checker that would audit your reply before you posted it. I have a lot of trouble with transposing letters ("have" comes out "ahve" etc.), which probably explains why [i]I can't play an English and it would be nice to have somethign catch all [quote]these typos before I post, and then have to go back and edit it to fix them (they're hard to spot in the raw text editing mode).

I can imagine typing your reply in another window in Word or AOL, then pasting it in, but that gets awkward if you're quoting a lot of text.

After typing a post in the usual way here (as I'm doing now) I often check the spelling by selecting all the text in the post, copying it, and pasting it into a window in which I can use a spell checker. On AOL, it's easy:

Command (or Control for non-Macs) A
Command C
Command-Shift N
Command V
Command =

You have to ignore the spell checker's objections to tags and remember that if any changes were necessary you need to port them back to your post in concertina.net.

Just caught a typo in this very post!

I have just installed the ASpell extension for my Firefox web browser - it works a treat and is highly recommended to all who are after a spell checker for this and other forums.

Just get Firefox and follow the instructions here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1022/ It's all free & easy to set up.

There you go - no more excuses for bad spelling!

Just saw this comic strip.

I see that Invision is a US company, so presumably if they supplied a spell checker it would insist on the US rather than the correct spelling of words like centre and organisation. Oh joy!

Chris

YES AND PRACTICING INSTEAD OF PRACTISING AND COLOR INSTEAD OF COLOUR jim will probably argue that american spelling is correct .but english was in use before america was colonised by english speaking settlers,and therefore is the mother tongue.otherwise ill start using irish english, tirty tree,and tird as its spoken here and tanks for thanksand tursday for thursday,ONLY JESTING JIM.

Careful Dick, the Moderating Team might insist that all future communication be carried out in Latin , as the official language. I think that most of us will then be having problems!

Regards,
Peter.