Word Count – count letters and words in the text
Everyone who writes knows how important it is to know how long the text is, how many words there are, and how many characters. Whether you are writing a school paper, an article, or applying for a job, there are usually conditions about the text’s length that you must meet. Even those who do not engage in these activities can often wonder how long is the text on the web page.
Introducing Word Count, a free plugin for Mozilla Firefox that counts words and characters in the text within a web page.
How does Word Count work?
When you install Word Count, all you have to do is open a document or webpage with the text in Firefox, then select (highlight) the text whose length you are interested in, right-click on the selected text and left-click on the newly added Word Count option. You will then see information about the number of words and characters for the highlighted text in the lower right corner of the screen.
As we can see, Word Count is a very simple plugin. It works very fast and is incredibly easy to use. Since it works within Firefox, it will be available on every website you visit, with no restrictions. We especially liked that it also works inside the input fields, so if you write an email or a comment, you can quickly and easily check the text’s length.
However, we have two criticisms of Word Count. The first is that the info on the number of characters shows the sum of all letters, punctuation marks, and spaces. There is no information only on the number of letters. This can often be a problem, and we are a little surprised that developers have made this oversight. With programs like this one, the goal is to provide the user with as much information as possible.
Another minor objection is that the information window is tied to the Windows screen, not the Firefox window. This means that when Firefox doesn’t take up the entire screen, the information is not displayed within Firefox but is still in the lower right corner. This can be inconvenient, especially if there is something completely different in that part of the screen and it has nothing to do with the text.
Conclusion
We believe that every computer should have a program for counting letters and words, and Word Count does a pretty good job. Although we have objections, we do not think that they are so big that it does not deserve a recommendation. Simple, easy to use, and very fast make Word Count good enough for most users.
Platform:
Mozilla Firefox