One of the new neat features coming to Internet Explorer 10 is the first browser-based implementation of auto-correct. As the Internet Explorer blog points out, this will complement the system-wide spell check to be offered to all applications running in Windows 8, in addition to built-in spell check for IE10 on Windows 7.
Like with oh-so-many technological innovations of our time, auto-correct makes our life easier, and serves as the bane of our existence. It"s a great improvement from the days of yelling at your old feature phone"s T9 corrector to memorize names of streets or friends that don"t currently exist in its built-in dictionary, all while managing to type away with just 9 keys.
At the same time, auto-correct serves as a source of great amusement - well, perhaps more embarrassment than amusement. So let"s see how Microsoft will help out with typos on the keyboards of today, and the Windows 8 tablets of tomorrow:
Got a mistyped word? It"ll change it for you automatically. If you don"t like the change, you can hit CTRL+Z or bring up the context menu via SHIFT+F10 or the menu key.
If the last word you entered isn"t something that appears to be an English word at first glance, then Internet Explorer will turn to the system-wide spell checker for suggestions:
You can try out these changes right now using Internet Explorer 10 in the Windows Developer Preview. One of the greatest features of it is the fact that your custom dictionary will sync via the cloud. If you"re logged on with a Windows Live ID to a Windows workstation, you"ll have your dictionary synchronized from any other Windows 8 PC you"ve logged into. Impressive, and very useful, especially if Microsoft adds this to Windows Phone 8.
While auto-correct sounds great (so long as it isn"t as amusing as its siblings on other platforms), we wonder why this functionality isn"t offered system-wide as is the case of the spell checker? Perhaps a third party addon can answer to that.
Image Credit: Internet Explorer blog