English (Australian) Dictionary

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by ecsuser on Nov. 3, 2008 · permalink

This deserves five stars simply because it's pointless having spell checking if the software doesn't support our language. (And because the poor ratings in a couple of other reviews have been on irrelevant grounds.) I haven't checked in detail - an impossible task - whether this add-on supports all of the standard Australian spellings as documented in the Macquarie dictionary, but my experience so far has been good.

One negative, and this is a Thunderbird bug: I still can't work out how to make this the default dictionary. I've read the instructions in http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Using+the+spell+checker, and they don't make sense because I can't find *any* menu in Thunderbird that includes the elusive "Languages" option. I'm using Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 for OS/2 and eCS. Are the instructions only valid for a different version? (As a rule, I prefer not to upgrade right to the buggy bleeding edge.) I know there's another add-on that will let me switch dictionaries in mid-stream, and I used to use it, but I gave up on it because it kept randomly changing dictionaries.

Aha! While spell-checking this review I discovered the elusive "Languages" option. It turns out to be a Firefox option, not a Thunderbird option. So I've now set my default dictionary (I assume) to Australian in Firefox, but I still don't have a clue how to do it in Thunderbird.