Learn About Jacuba Spell

Features

Jacuba Spell is an online spellchecker which uses JavaScript and HTML to check your spelling as you type. It works by replacing the text areas in a page with an editor which provides:

Spell Checking
Words are checked as you type, underlining the words which are not recognized.

Suggested Corrections
A popup menu provides easy access to possible corrections.

Complete Dictionary
An online dictionary provides hundreds of thousands of definitions for words and includes a thesaurus, antonyms and related words.

Personal Dictionary
An easy to use personal dictionary called "My Words" is available which allows you to add words to the spellchecker. These words are stored in a cookie and can be shared between all the sites which use Jacuba Spell.

Online Help
Even though the editor is as simple to use as a regular text area there is always immediate access to online help via a "Help" link in each editor.

Benefits

Jacuba Spell spellchecks words by sending them to our servers. This means that adding Jacuba Spell to a website doesn't require installing any software or scripts onto your server. It also means that any additional bandwidth needed for the editor comes from our servers and not yours, and because Jacuba Spell works by enhancing the text areas that are already on a website, visitors using older web browsers can continue to the use the site just as they normally would. So in summary:

No Server Software
Because our servers do all the spell checking there's nothing to install on your server and no additional processing load.

No Bandwidth
Because our servers do all the spell checking any additional communication between the browser is with our servers not yours.

Robust Architecture
Because Jacuba Spell editors only replace text areas when the browser is fully supported and our servers are available, there is no problem with excluding particular browsers or with interruptions of service preventing visitors from editing their text.

The Technology

Jacuba Spell belongs to the emerging family of AJAX which enrich websites by interactively connecting webpages with live data. This makes the website more responsive because small amounts of information can be exchanged and updated in the webpage without the whole page being reloaded.

Jacuba Spell uses this technique to rapidly pass the words being typed into text areas back to our servers for spell checking. It combines this with code which formats the text as it's typed. The result is a rapid and seamless service which highlights spelling mistakes and instantaneously offers corrections.

Jacuba Spell also takes advantage of Javascript bookmarks, called "favelets". These are like normal bookmarks except that instead of containing the location of a webpage, they contain a small script which can modify the loaded webpage. Jacuba Spell uses its favelet to automatically load the Jacuba Spell code and enhance the text areas.