Mail now has three spell checking options: never, as I type, and when I click Send¹. I've tried all three (and my language is already set to British English--it always is on all my computers, even at work, along with the date formats). But here are my issues with how they're implementing spelling correction now:

• never: Well, you know--I don't want to send out mistakes. And I will, without any spell checking at all.
• as I type: Auto-corrects unless I interrupt my typing to tell it not to, assuming I catch it at the time.
• when I click Send: This is F7 type spell checking, like you might do (or have done) in Word before you deem a document finished. It's better than nothing, except for the part where it also spell checks quoted text, and as you noted--I'm using British English. 2/3 of the people who are sending me email aren't. So there are a lot of false hits, and if I've interspersed quoted text with my own, the chances of cocking it all up are pretty large

I don't get how this is better than what they had before, especially since browsers do the red underline thing, word processors do it...I'd rather have Mail be more like MacBook and PC applications than an iPod application. How is that even a question?

¹: I'm not sure what you're controlling with the "Correct spelling automatically" selection in Languages & Text, but it's not Mail. Mail has its control in its own Preferences.

With "Check spelling" set to "As I type" in Mail Prefs, I get the red line and not autocorrect. And I seem to have "Correct spelling automatically" checked in Language & Text. Huh.

That's 5.3 (1280), -t?

I have a little tag that appears when I'm near to the end of the word (like on my iPod), and if I just keep going with the word that's not in the dictionary, it replaces it with what was in the taggy thingy. It's fucking irritating. I tried to take a screenshot, but losing focus makes the suggestion disappear. Skitch is pretty good for free, but no timed captures.

6.0 (1485)

Might need Mountain Lion. I don't remember how the spelling check worked before I upgraded, but I know Mail wanted a software update right after the OS.

Interesting, I get the red underline in Mail, but I just checked and my version is 5.2 (1278). The thing is I don't see a current update available for it, and this is on a machine I just purchased about a week ago.

That's another thing that I'm finding frustrating right now--I don't know what the baseline for anything is. When I google solutions to various new things, pages that say OS X Lion are kind of but not totally what I'm running. This puppy is two weeks out of Shanghai and I've installed every update that the pipe has suggested--why am I in a different Lion place from other people?

zamzar no longer does youtube. Is there another site or software that does? Converting online videos to mp3s, that is.

I use Download helper

thanks!

When I whined on LifeHacker about the cosmetic Lion changes that I didn't like, someone gave me this [link] to skins.

eta: No, that wasn't from LH--where did I get that...god, my brain...