requirements - Javascript based spell-checkers for web applications

Question

I have just received a requirement to implement spell checking on a web application that we are creating. I know all about FF, Chrome, IESpell, etc. but this one is the client's request.

Given that the only way to implement something like this (real time) is with JavaScript libraries, I want to know has anyone tried any of the open source ones? Were they any good? In general, what types of good/bad things can be said about this approach?

I guess going into this, I am against it as it is just more work for the end users's machine to do for little benefit. I guess what I mean by that is that it will be a script that is constantly doing something as opposed to an AJAX request or a quick div update which could lead to seemingly bad performance for our application even though it is a spell checker checking every input field on the page. It seems also that there is lots of room for a javascript error to stall the entire site.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

I agree that a spell-checker should be native if it's running at all times. If the client demands an explicit spell checker, though, it should be implemented as a button to be clicked when needed. It might also be worth firing that XHR request after the user has stopped typing for a certain amount of time, like SO does for syntax highlighting when writing a post.

I used After the Deadline for my school newspaper's back-end spell-checker, since it is powerful, checked for simple grammar errors as well, and integrated easily with TinyMCE. There's also a jQuery plugin to integrate with the service.