asp:review

RapidSpell Web .NET v3.4.2

Spell Checking Redefined

By Anand Narayanaswamy

Computers don t have the power to automatically check the spelling of a document on a Web page. It is tedious and time consuming to develop new software from scratch. Hence, there s a huge demand for powerful third-party software that can perform quickly and accurately the job of a spell checker. Keyoti s RapidSpell Web .NET is a high-performance ASP.NET control that performs spell checking of an ASP.NET page in various ways by using a powerful set of algorithms.

A fully functional development version of the product is available from http://www.keyoti.com/products/rapidspell/dotNetWeb/evaluation.html (in executable format). The vendor also provides the installation package in ZIP format for the benefit of those who wish to work with the product manually without using Visual Studio 2005. A deployment license is required to use the product in a remote Web server; for this the vendor provides a 30-day, time-limited key, which can obtained from http://www.keyoti.com/products/evaluation-key-generator/default.aspx?SKU=RSWEB.NET.

I installed the executable package and tested the product locally by manually adding the controls to the Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox (as the installer doesn t add them if SQL Server 2005 has been installed on the development machine). The Quick Start guide that shipped with the product was extremely helpful for me to initially develop two sample applications. The guide examines step-by-step each process involved, accompanied by screenshots. You should make sure to place the RapidSpellWeb control in a separate ASP.NET page (as mentioned in the RapidSpellWebPage property of the RapidSpellWebLauncher control), as it will help you more easily customize its appearance and also set dictionary paths. Otherwise, you ll have to modify these properties in every page, which will be a time-consuming job for any big application.

A key feature of the product is that it performs both dialog and inline document highlighted spell checking with Undo functionality.

Figure 1: Spell checking in progress.

The inline feature checks the spelling of the words at the same time you enter them inside the TextBox. This will help users to correct the spellings instantly. Moreover, as-you-type spell checking can be added to the inline control when using RapidSpellWInlineTextBox, which ships with the product.

Figure 2: Inline spell checking in action.

The product not only checks content from the ASP.NET TextBox control, but also from a wide range of third party HTML text boxes, including the inline TextBox mentioned above. You only need to connect the product with the relevant source. Some of the other interesting features of the product are multilingual user interface, fast proprietary algorithms, duplicate word detection, and the ability to customize text, style, color, and layout.

The vendor provides the complete Application Programming Interface (API) along with the product. I hope this will benefit advanced .NET programmers to modify the product as per their requirements. Even though I tested the product using Internet Explorer 6, the product is compatible with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 6, FireFox, Opera, and the newly released Windows version of Safari browser. The vendor has given great importance to security by implementing support for Secured Sockets Layer (SSL) and malicious script filtering functionality. A complete list of all the features included with the product can be viewed at http://www.keyoti.com/products/rapidspell/dotNetWeb/features.html.

I found that the product ships with the ability to spell check nearly 151,305 words (US English) with the help of the Dict Manager Utility. Moreover, the tool enables you to add words to and remove words from the dictionary with search functionality. The vendor provides flexible licensing options, as described at http://www.keyoti.com/products/rapidspell/dotNetWeb/licensing.html.

The product includes complete product documentation, Quick Start guides, and demos in both C# and VB. You can also access a live online demo of the product, a list of important screenshots, online documentation, and a set of Frequently Asked Questions at http://www.keyoti.com/products/rapidspell/dotNetWeb/index.html. Keyoti provides excellent support through e-mail and forums. I would like to see the vendor create a series of videos as a supplement to the Quick Start guide, as this would enable customers to learn how to use the product quickly and in a truly interactive way.

We make spelling mistakes, but RapidSpell Web .NET doesn t. This is what I found during testing. If you have doubt, explore it yourself.

Anand Narayanaswamy, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), works as an independent consultant and runs NetAns Technologies (http://www.netans.com), which provides Web hosting services based in Trivandrum, India. Anand also works as a technical editor lead for http://ASPAlliance.com. He runs http://www.Learnxpress.com, http://Dotnetalbum.com, and http://Csharpfaq.com. Anand is the author of Community Server Quickly (Packt Publishing). You can explore more information about the book at http://www.communityserverbook.com. Find out more about him at http://www.visualanand.net or e-mail him at mailto:netans@gmail.com.

Rating:

Web Site: http://www.keyoti.com

Price: Single developer license, US$250