[thelist] Spolsky: things you can't do really well in a webapplication

David Kaufman david at gigawatt.com
Thu Jun 17 13:38:36 CDT 2004


Joel D Canfield <joel at spinhead.com> wrote:

Quoting from Joel's (the other one, not me) latest article:
======================================
Here are a few examples of things you can't really do well in a web
application:

2. Build a real-time spell checker with wavy red underlines
[snip]
======================================

So, I'm curious. Some of 'em seem, conceptually, simple. Spell checker?
Keyboard driven interface? I appreciate the qualifier 'well' in his
comment, but is this really accurate, right now today?

gmail has an excellent implementation of a spell checker.  it doesnt
have "wavy red underlines" but is extremely usable nonetheless, as well
as useful.  There is also a very nice one for Squirrelmail that is open
source.  While these do require round-trips to the server, the user
experience is still that one can write, spell-check, revise only if
necessary, and send.  that's exactly what the user wants to do.

Joel (the other one) hasn't seen much DHTML, it would seem.

-dave



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