One of the new features of Firefox 2.0 is the built-in spell checker. And I made a test on how good the built-in dictionary is. And for the comparison, I also tested the same text in Safari which uses OS X's built-in spell checker.
This is the result of Firefox 2.0's built-in spell checker:
And for comparison, this is the spelling result from Safari 2.0.4:
(red underline indicates wrong spellings by either browser.)
As you can see, I carefully chose some word, most of them you can't find them in English dictionaries, but those words are commonly used. (Those words were spelled in their preferred way, e.g. QuickTime and SeaMonkey.)
The Firefox's result is shocking!
Firefox refuses to recognise any of the registered trademarks/product names of Apple. ("apple" and "safari" can be found in dictionary.)
Mac OS X does recognise a few names such as "Mozilla", "Netscape" (those are not in standard dictionary.)
It is also interesting to note that if the word "Google" is recognised by Firefox, why doesn't Firefox know the words "iPod" and "QuickTime"? The word iPod is used a lot nowadays, and "QuickTime" is an important web technology (back to early Netscape days). Further, if Firefox says "Google" is a correct word, what's wrong with "MSN"? "MSN" is another very popular service as well.
I do realise Firefox's lead developer - Ben Goodger - currently works for Google Inc.
