Firefox spell checker not working in contentEditable areas

[Otto42]

Trunk.
Use Visual Editor.
Enter bad spelling. I use "This is a hgihd test."
Note that hgihd is not underlined in Firefox 3.0.3.
Right click field, turn off spell checking.
Right click field, turn it on again. Word will become underlined.

This is basically the same problem as #3856. The solution there was to force gecko_spellcheck to true. I checked the code, and that solution is still in there, so somewhere, a change to the TinyMCE code must be disabling this. I notice some code in the TinyMCE advanced theme that has comments along these lines, but I am not familiar enough with TinyMCE to work out what that does.

Stranger behavior is that it will work on the first word if the first word is misspelled, but not on subsequent words.

It doesn't default on at all under IE7... and never has, to my memory. I always click the button.

So is this a bug, or by design?

This seems to be affected somehow by the editor's internal iframe css, couldn't find a definite pattern though.

(In [9917]) Several TinyMCE fixes and adjustments: Gecko spellchecker, Gallery options, single quote in image captions, see #8021

Works for me in FF 3.0.4 on OS X 10.4.11

Sorry, what? What was fixed? It exhibits the exact same behavior on FF/Win ... no change whatsoever.

Firefox: New Post -> "This is a hgihd test" -> Nothing spell checked.
Firefox: New Post -> "hgihd This is a test" -> 'hgihd' highlighted
IE : New Post -> "This is a hgihd test" -> Nothing checked.
IE : New Post -> "hgihd This is a test" -> Nothing checked.

So now the question is --- is it supposed to auto-check? Or are you supposed to hit the button? Because now you guys are saying it's fixed, when no behavior has changed. ;-)

Futher ....

FF: New Post -> "This hgdhs test" -> Nothing checked.

FF: New Post -> "hgdhs this test" -> 'hgdhs' highlighted

FF: New Post -> "hgdhs test shdg" -> 'hgdhs' highlighted

If you click the Spell Check button twice, both 'hgdhs' and 'shdg' are highlighted.

In IE, you only have to click the button once, and both will be highlighted.

This seems to be a problem in contentEditable areas in FF that only triggers sometimes, can't see any pattern to it though. Sending upstream.

Why not unify the functionality across browsers, and set Autocheck to off? It always works correctly when you hit the button, and that way, you'd only have to hit it once instead of twice... and it could make it into 2.7. ;-)

Confirming that I get this behavior a lot. Firefox 3.0.x's built in spell check on WordPress 2.7 is intermittent and random. Seems worst when typing new post, but sometimes happens intermittently when revising existing post.

Being bold and bumping to "major" severity because A. I'll bet proper spelling is important to most people and B. Firefox's spell check works in other apps.

After reading this thread I wonder how this is related to Wordpress?
You're talking about Firefox's built in spell checker and TinyMCE. Both of which have nothing to do with Wordpress code. (Granted WP does integrate TinyMCE)

If words underline noting misspellings while using TinyMCE maybe you should contact Firefox or TinyMCE devs, or both.

also, since this isn't my thread.. I would suggest someone change this to a severity of Minor or Trivial.

just my 2 cents.

It has nothing to do with Firefox's spell checker. It's an issue with the "correct" behavior of the JavaScript, which seems to works properly in IE and not in Firefox.

No, this seems to be Firefox spellchecker/iframe/contentEditable bug that has been around for a long time (since FF 1.5 I think). It's intermittent and hard to build test case for.

Did quite a bit of testing some time ago trying to determine what triggers it but couldn't pinpoint it exactly. Seems to be affected by some specific css and/or js dom manipulations but not consistently. Seen something similar happen in some versions of Thunderbird too although the cause may be unrelated.

The spellchecker in WebKit browsers seems to work properly.

+1 to closing this as invalid. If someone comes up with a workaround I'll be glad to add it but don't think this is WordPress bug.

Umm ... It uses GoogleSpell, not the Firefox Spellchecker.

As I've mentioned multiple times, disabling auto-check fixes the issue, and makes the the behavior consistent on both browsers. In clicking the button or right-click Spell Check on Firefox, it worked perfectly fine every time.

It's only when you're using the onLoad event there's a problem.

Change "if(!s.gecko_spellcheck)t.getBody().spellcheck=0;" to "spellcheck=0". Done. Finished. No problem. ;-)

Turn on the Spellchecker, it works every single time.

Sorry, let me try that again ---

I've asked before what was the intended behavior: was it supposed to auto-check in both browsers and work, or was it supposed to rely on the user clicking a button?

There are too many tangents in this thread.

The correct behavior (I'm sorry, I messed up a little there) ... would be have Browser Consistency and have the Spell Check work, correct?

Easy --- change tiny_mce.js:

if(!s.gecko_spellcheck)t.getBody().spellcheck=0;

To:

t.getBody().spellcheck=0;

Problem solved.

Browser Consistency ... Working Spell Checker.

closing as wontfix per andrew's suggestion. to those who are affected: please report this upstream to moxiecode (TinyMCE's developers).

Replying to 112502:

... Browser Consistency ... Working Spell Checker.

By browser consistency you mean turning off the built-in spellchecker in Firefox, Safari and Chrome because IE doesn't have one? Don't think so.. Everyone expects to have a spellchecker in all textareas except IE users.

This seems to be a Firefox issue, not TinyMCE's.

Actually, no. It's hit or miss which browsers that it "automatically" starts in. In Firefox, it's broken when it automatically starts, and not working at all. Thus, for "browser consistency," turning off the Auto-Start made complete sense, especially given that the spell check actually WORKS when you hit the button.

I wish some of you had just answered the funtionality question --- "is it supposed to auto-check? Or are you supposed to hit the button?" from five months ago --- instead of being so ridiculously pedantic about it now. Because, well, even still --- it's never been answered, and from a Dev perspective, it's something that needs to be addressed, rather than just voting it off the island.

Basically, this has gone way off topic. Blame whatever ... meanwhile, there's a valid fix there that makes it work on every browser out there. But oh well. *shrug*