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A Spell Checking Suggestion Engine for ASP

If you've used popular search facilities provided by companies such as Google or Yahoo then you've no doubt seen the "Did you mean…" link at the top of the search results. This usually appears if you have made a mis-spelling in your search phrase.

If you have your own search facility on your website then you might like to implement similar functionality on your search. As well as helping customers who have difficulty with spelling, it also assists with users who have mistyped something. Such a facility can often quickly pay for itself, especially on e-commerce sites where a customer may not know the correct spelling of a product name or brand name.

Writing such a facility from scratch would be a time consuming operation. Fortunately it is possible to purchase the appropriate technology and integrate it with most websites. A popular solution is ASPDidYouMean. This product is from the vendors of the popular website checking solution ASPSpellCheck (see ASPSpellCheck review).

The product is implemented as an ActiveX server component. As such it will work with any website hosted on a Microsoft Windows server where it is possible to register 3rd party dlls. This is of course possible if you have your own hosted dedicated server, although many hosting companies will register components for a small fee. As it is implemented in ActiveX, it will work with any ASP website running on a Windows hosted server. It would also be possible to use ASP.NET. Windows versions of PHP also potentially support the use of ActiveX technology, so PHP websites could also make use of the solution.

The solution is easy to implement with just a few lines of ASP code (either VBScript or JScript). The product's documentation contains useful source code examples.

Links and Downloads

• Download trial version of ASPDidYouMean (includes full documentation)
• ASP Spell Checker website

Useful Development Tools

ASP Documentation Tool™

Automatically creates developer documentation for ASP 2.0 and 3.0 web applications written in VBScript and JScript. Documentation for Microsoft Access, SQL Server 7/2000 databases and Visual Basic 6.0 components associated with the web application can also be incorporated into the reports. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (5.2Mb ZIP file).

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View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (5Mb ZIP file).

SQL Documentation Tool

The SQL Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and 2000 databases. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced. The SQL Documentation Tool documents SQL Server Tables, Views, Stored Procedures, Triggers and Table Relationships.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (10.3Mb ZIP file).

VB Documentation Tool

The VB Documentation Tool creates technical documentation for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 projects. Technical documentation is created in HTML and HTML Help formats. The HTML Help format documentation is fully searchable and cross referenced.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (1Mb ZIP file).

Indexing Service Companion

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Try Sample Search Facility.     Download Trial Version (1.7Mb ZIP file).

The Website Utility

The Website Utility examines websites for errors and areas that need to be optimised for search engines by using a built in web crawling engine. Errors checked for include broken or moved hyperlinks, missing page titles and missing meta tags. It also generates HTML for use in creating website site maps (table of contents pages - like this one), and is able to create both client-side JavaScript Search Engines and server-side ASP Search Engines for a website.

View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (3Mb ZIP file).

PHP Documentation Tool™

Automatically creates developer documentation for PHP web applications. Documentation is created in HTML, HTML Help and plain text formats.

View Sample Output (HTML Help format).     View Sample Output (HTML Format).     Download Trial Version (1.0Mb ZIP file).