Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by LukeCro on Aug. 3, 2008 · permalink

Excellent!

After switching from a Windows PC to a Mac, one of the few Windows-only programs I was really missing was WordWeb -- a robust-but-lightweight international dictionary program that would let you look up any word in any program window by simply clicking a keyboard shortcut (like ctrl-alt-w). Sure, Apple has a good built-in dictionary program that's also integrated with their Spotlight app and can also be used within a dashboard widget and can be acessed quickly via certain key Apple programs -- but I was still left in the cold when it came to looking up words in Firefox with super speed.

David Costanzo's "Dict" add-on/extension warms up Firefox nicely -- simply highlight any word, right-click, and choose the "Look Up" or "Define" option (depending on the version of the Dict you're using) and whammo! a slick, unfussy pop-up window appears with multiple dictionary and thesaurus entries for the word.

Works for text highlighted just about anywhere on the page -- within articles, standard HTML, and even within text-input areas. Very handy. Very fast. Intuitive GUI.

I hope that future versions might adopt some of the ancillary benefits and tools seen in WordWeb (e.g., the option to click on words to hear them pronounced; more spelling suggestions and "similar word" options and links to more resources/results, etc.). The ability to use Dict's right-click functionality in other programs would also be cool (e.g., Mac and PC shell integration, or at least integration with a few key Firefox-friendly programs like OpenOffice.org). And it would be cool if Dict could be optionally pointed at dictionaries located on the user's hard-drive instead of only using online resources.

But that's just wishlist stuff -- Dict is really quite great as-is.