Dictionary Tooltip Firefox Extension

What's an oxymoron again? Who or what is quixotic? You may find the Dictionary Tooltip Extension for Firefox useful if you need to look up words in dictionaries regularly that you stumble upon while you are browsing the Internet.  While you can certainly look them up manually, either online or using a paper dictionary, you may find the Firefox extension helpful as it automates part of the process.

This extension lets you highlight a word or phrase and shows a definition of that word after you perform one of the following three possible actions.

• You double-click the word.
• You right-click and select view definition.
• You hit the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + K.

A mighty useful extension not only for natives but also people with English as their second or even third language.

The extension offers a convenient way of looking up words in Firefox without having to browser to a third party website or even another tab to do so.

The latest version of the extension ships with several dictionary sites included:

• The Free Dictionary
• Dictionary.com
• Answers
• Word Reference
• Dict.Leo.org
• Wikipedia
• Google Search

It is even possible to add custom sites to it, which do not necessarily have to be dictionary sites or encyclopedias. It is also possible to to add sites that translate words or phrases into another language, or search engines to search for the selection directly.

You can furthermore enable or disable specific triggers in the preferences. If you do not want the double-click to trigger the look-up you can disable it completely, or switch to Ctrl-double-click instead.

If you have configured multiple sites in the extension's options, you will see options to switch the dictionary in the popup that appears. You can also customize when and hot the popup is shown in the Firefox browser.

The extension has not been updated for over a year, and it shows in the interface. Options to change the layout and design of the popup, for instance the font size, are long requested features that have not been integrated by the author yet.

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