Update: If you’re using Firefox 0.9.2, 0.9.3, or 1.0 Preview, use Spellbound. It is far easier to install, much more reliable, and works beautifully.

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Mozilla “Firefox” v0.8 (formerly Firebird) has been released, but not without some problems: Some people have had issues with themes, some with the installer itself, and still others with the Firebird Spell Checker solution.

Thanks to some extremely helpful work from Andrew Stevens at blogipity, we’re back in business with the spell check and Firefox. I hope I’m not stepping on toes, but I’m going to reprint his installation instructions (my comments in italics):

  1. Make a copy of the “composer.xpt” file in the Firebird components directory. (Note: This is where I had a problem since I uninstalled Firebird prior to installing Firefox. For the sake of simplicity, Windows users can grab the composer.xpt file from here that I pulled from the Windows Firebird 0.7 package).
  2. Uninstall Firebird (if you haven’t already!)
  3. Grab the stuff you want from your old profile, bookmarks, etc., which is still labelled Phoenix, and then delete the profile. (This is probably going to be stored in “C:\Documents and Settings\[your_username]\Application Data\Phoenix” for Windows users).
  4. Install Firefox, but don’t start the program after the install.
  5. Place a copy “composer.xpt” into the Firefox/Components directory. (Again, for Windows users, this will likely be “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components”).
  6. Start Firefox.
  7. Install spellcheck.xpi.
  8. Shut down Firefox.
  9. Install fromspellcheckerfe0_4_0.xpi. (Andrew notes that there is a copy of composer_xpt_1_6b.xpt here, but I haven’t tested this version).
  10. Shut down Firefox.
  11. Start Firefox.

Enjoy, and again, thanks to Andrew for his great help.

If you’re using Firefox v0.9, please see Andrew at blogipity. It seems that each successive version of Firefox breaks the spell checker, but once again Andrew has come through with the answer.