Nanospell Spell Checking Software Components
JavaScript jQuery CKEditor TinyMCE PHP ASP.Net Classic ASP

ckeditor spell check plugin

The Secure Spell-Check Plugin for CKEditor

NanoSpell ckeditor spellcheck plugin adds inline spellchecking to CKEditor 4+.   It is ideal for secure admin areas, SAAS services & secure intranets, or on websites where user experience counts.

Download NanoSpell for CKEditor (0.7MB)  »

Live Demo - CKEditor Spellchecking Plugin



The nanospell plugin underlines typos automatically, and returns accurate spelling suggestions on right click within the context menu.  We aim for zero learning curve for your users.

Source Code

<script src="https://cdn.ckeditor.com/4.5.9/standard/ckeditor.js"></script>
<script src="path/to/nanospell/autoload.js"></script>
<textarea id='editor1'>...</textarea>				
<script>CKEDITOR.replace( 'editor1');</script>

<script>
 nanospell.ckeditor('editor1',{
    dictionary : "en",  // 24 free international dictionaries  
    server : "php"      // can be php, asp, asp.net or java
 }); 
</script>

As you can see - nanospell spellchecker for ckeditor even works with CDN hosted versions of CKEditor…
Downloading and integration takes just a few minutes. Learn More…

Get Started

Step 1 - Download it

Download nanospell ckeditor spellchecker and unzip it anywhere in your web/intranet project.

Step 2 - Test it

Browse to /path/to/nanospell/getstarted.html
The page will verify that everything is working for you, and even provide personalized code samples.

Step 3 - Code away!

Just copy the following lines of javascript code anywhere in your page.

<script src="path/to/nanospell/autoload.js"></script>
 		
<script>  
 nanospell.ckeditor('textarea_id',{
 	dictionary:"en",
 	server:"php"  // can be php, asp, asp.net or java
 	}); 
</script>

Download NanoSpell Spell Check Plugin



Intuitive User Experience

“Spellcheck as you type” within ckeditor. No learning-curve for users.

Install on any Host

Easily set-up on modern web hosting. Just upload and go.

Developer Friendly

Well documented and kept clean, simple & stable.

Private & Secure

Never sends your data to remote spellchecking servers. No Ads.

International Dictionaries

Free CKEditor spell-check dictionaries from across the world.

Developer Support

Maintained by the original developers.. who love CKEditor

In a nutshell what is CKEditor Spell Check?

CKeditor spellcheck by nanospell is an integrated spelling correction plug-in for CKEditor. It provides contextual spellchecking suggestions when the user right clicks on any typo highlighted by a red underline - in a very similar manner to Microsoft Word.

Why did we make CKEditor Spell Check?

We realize that the world’s most popular software is moving online and away from the desktop. within these web applications it is very common to see CKEditor and TinyMCE used to allow rich markup to be entered by non-technical users.

This is seen in content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal, and also in custom enterprise applications which are consistently being moved to a browser-based platform within big business and government.

The issue is that the spellchecking functionality we are all familiar with from the browser is not available within CKEditor. This is not an oversight on their development part, but a technical limitation of HTML and JavaScript which currently disallow custom context menus being mixed with the system context menus which are used by the spellchecker. In short CKEditor is so user-friendly, and somewhat ahead of its time, that basic functionality but we all require to ensure good data is no longer compatible.

As web developers are customers didn't accept or understand this limitation. We wanted to bring back that spell checking feature which our clients and users love - but we couldn't find an acceptable plug-in at an acceptable price.

So we made this one.

What is a business benefit of using CKEditor Spell Check?

Our typical user base our engineers developing custom web applications ( or extending standard ones) for use in advanced websites and business intranet systems. People spend a large proportion of the working day using the systems, largely entering data, images, links and other content.

As many as 11% of the words entered into the system’s will contain spelling or grammar mistakes. The lack of acceptable spellchecking functionality within CKEditor can lead to as much as 20% of this time spent proofreading.

CKEditor spellcheck saves time, and increases data quality in any web app built on top of CKEditor.

Who can use this plug-in?

Anyone who is qualified to work the CKEditor can use nanospell. That includes front and back-end developers alike.

This plug-in has been designed to be easy to use. Although it is technically complicated, we have tried to keep the technical complication arms length, so that it is no harder to use than any other CKEditor or JavaScript plugin-in.

How does CKEditor spell check work?

The plug-in directly communicate the CKEditor and reads new words as you type them. As were the renters it finds an appropriate time to make an Ajax RPC request silently to our backend.

This back-end spell checks words using our own custom spellchecking dictionary technologies, and provides high quality suggestions back to the user in real-time.

This back-end is coded in three languages in parallel. It works in PHP for ubiquity, but it is also available for the Microsoft .Net framework and VBScript to provide modern and legacy support for Windows servers. Ultimately you don't need to know how only that it does work on almost any modern web hosting environment irrespective of the language you use the code yourself.

Is this technology secure?

 CKEditor spellcheck is unlikely to be the weak link in your security chain. It has been penetration tested by governmental and military organizations for sensitive use.

A key consideration is that CKEditor spellcheck does not send your sensitive information across the Internet for spell checking, as do other plug-ins. This helps to ensure that secure intranets stay secure.



Is CKEditor spell check open source?

CKEditor spell check is proprietary technology, that means it is not entirely free for you to copy and distribute. It is free for developer usage, but we pay when we deployed production. certain entities such as charities and good causes will be offered free licensing as a goodwill gesture to those who contribute positively to society.

Generally with the source files you will find that the front-end file are not obfuscated the source is open although it is copyrighted.

The backend files contain proprietary technology and so are either compiled or obfuscated to avoid intellectual property being abuse or stolen.

If you're looking for community contribution please go to our Github repo , where you can download working demos, and request features.

How does CKEditor spell check differ from the built-in spell checking plug-in within CKEditor?


Although they are similar in functionality plug-in is entirely different from the spellchecker.net / SCAYT plug-in which comes bundled with CKEditor. Notably out technology does not send all of your content across the Internet to a third-party server for spellchecking. We also do not present pop up banners and adverts to users.

For commercial / enterprise usage - our software has a significantly lower cost of ownership in every use case we can think of.

How is this plug-in supported?


 As you may have guessed from informality of this website, management was not corporate giant. we are a small team of specialist developers, we genuinely love spell checking.

Please feel free to contact us at dev@nanospell.com if you have a suggestion, feature request, or concern.

Does this plug-in have any known compatibility issues? 



We aim to keep CKEditor spell check as compatible as CKEditor.

 It’s primary compatibility requirement is that it will run on CKEditor 4.0 but not earlier/ legacy versions.

Browser Compatibility

CKEditor spellcheck is compatible with every browser which CKEditor 4.0 and above officially supports. This includes Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and many browsers on mobile platforms.

Server Compatibility

CKEditor spell check needs to run on a proper Web server to perform at spellchecking at the back-end. It can run on localhost, Windows IIS, Apache or NgineX on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and even BSD and Solaris.

What Dictionaries does this Spellchecker Use?

We have developed our own spellchecking dictionary format to effectively target the web platform.

From our dictionary download page you will find many English dictionaries including American, British, Canadian, Australian, and even South African dialects. We also have specialist English dictionaries for lawyers ,doctors, engineers, scientists and other specific professionals.

We support many international languages as well including common European languages such as French, German and Dutch and Spanish. Our global user base has inspired us to also support: Catalan, Gaelic, Indonesian and Brazilian Portuguese.

The developer will find that it is easy to add and remove languages from the spellchecker vocabulary - and even force specific suggestions where necessary. This is commonly used where businesses have specific vocabulary involving trademarks places names and organizational concepts that you wouldn't find in regular dictionary.

Do We develop any Other Software Products?

Nanospell (we) also provide a similar spellchecking, with almost identical functionality for TinyMCE.