Pre-Firefox 1.5 had this really cool option in the top right quick search. You could type in a word, select the Dictionary.com from the drop down, hit enter, and within seconds confirm if the word you typed was spelled correctly and even hop to the Thesaurus to find another version of the same word on a whim.
As of 1.5, it’s replaced with The Free Dictionary.com. It’s not as simple as Dictionary.com’s interface, but the worst part of all?
Try double-clicking the word it finds. It refreshes the page, removing your highlight, thus you can’t copy paste. You can if you drag, but wtf? Talk about the most successful way to f’up the usability your website. Smooth move crackheads!
My co-worker claims that they do that because they are somehow getting your double-click to register with the ads below the word… I don’t believe it, but am not discounting the possibility. Giving people the benefit of the doubt on the internet is hard.
…I miss my Dictionary.com…
Hey Jesse,
Just FYI, you can also just type ‘dict [wordToLookUp]’ in the address field. Pre 1.5 it did the search on dictionary.com, but now uses answers.com. I was also sad to see this change.
Ben
I never noticed that feature to miss it, but I do use dictionary.com except I access it by typing ‘dict something’ in Firefox’s address bar.
I wonder why Firefox 1.5 on all of my systems uses dictionary.com still.
Ctrl+K, define:[word]
I agree with your comparison
I have an Add Engines options in the drop-down. It may have been an extension but is simple to use. Can only add and not delete I believe though
Same here. I used to use dictionary.com to find the uh, umm, the ah, um, oh yeah, words for things. I also used it to check spelling. I’m with you on this. I’d at least appreciate the options.
i see what they are doing: double click another random word on the page…it then looks up that word in the dictionary. Kind of interesting, but a dumb move usability-wise.
https://addons.mozilla.org/search-engines.php
There’s a whole list of cool stuff to add to the search dropdown… dictionary.com is in that list as well: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/dictionary.com.html
To remove engines either get the hack from the add-ons page, or (for win xp) go to:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[code].default\searchplugins
Cheerio,
Hey Jesse, that pissed me off too! I used that feature alot, now I gotta bookmark dictionary.com and it slows me down. Anyway, you win some you loose some. Blah!
Dave
dict in the location field used to take me to dictionary.com’s definition as well. Then all of a sudden it started taking me to some other location. I just found out how to get it working again, so thought I’d put it here for others who may like it:
Go to dictionary.com and make a bookmark to that page. Edit the bookmark so that the Location field has:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s and the Keyword field has dict in it. Save the changes, and now type dict in the location bar at top and it should work for you!