Google is officially the Best Thing In The Universe(tm). They just put version 3.0 of the Google Toolbar into beta, and it's got a feature that browsers should've implemented around 1996. . .

Spell Checking!!!

One thing that always always got under my skin about this whole "blogging" phenomenon is that it's a step backwards quality-wise from the way I used to do things. When I did my journal manually in MS FrontPage, the system would dutifully put a little red squiggly under any word that I misspelled, allowing me to change it before posting and making me look much more literate than I actually am. While I do like the stuff that automated blogging software provides (automatic indexing, etc), I wanted the best of all worlds. And that includes spell-checking and on-screen formatting of entries.

While the on-screen formatting is still gonna wait, Google Toolbar 3 now has a little spell-check button that'll check the spelling in any form entry-field on the current web-page, showing me potential problems and allowing me to fix 'em before submitting.

Yes, that's right. My developer journal now has the functionality that VIP Writer for my TRS-80 had around 1983.

Rumor has it that the Google Browser is on the horizon. You can bet that I'll be snapping that up when it appears.