With this popup, you can view the ascender, cap height and even the unicode code and HTML entity right from within Fontcase. The Characters tab also has a very handy feature where a double-click on the character will show a popup glyph viewer which lets you view all the unicode glyphs for every font in your library. A very nice way to really get an overview of how the font will look in multiple settings. Both Grid View & List View have nice preview options at the bottom, with tabs for Characters, Waterfall and Body text. I kinda would like to see the color indications carried over to List view, but perhaps it makes things a bit too busy visually. In List view, the check box is your visual indication. In Grid view, active fonts have a green stripe along the bottom of the block, System Fonts a yellow & black industrial “warning” stripe, and deactivated fonts are gray. The text preview column doesn’t seem to allow for font previews in the font name, which I found to be a limitation. It’s a nice looking feature, but a bit unwieldly to browse through a large collection List view has the typical columns (which are customizable) and lets you sort by name, foundry, kind, etc. Grid view is almost like the grid of iPhone apps on the iPhone screen, with mini-previews of each font in it’s font name. Once your fonts are added, there are two main views, an “icon” or Grid and List view. The 1200+ fonts took less than 5 minutes to fully import. Importing my fonts went smoothly and was even smart enough to not import duplicate font files from the Finder. The sidebar has nice icon design and there are clear distinctions visually between each section. The interface is very iTunes-like, which I think is a smart approach - stick with what users know. Upon launching Fontcase, you’ll see great care has been taken to make sure it’s a good Mac OS X citizen - lots of polish to the interface, and also uses many 10.5 features such as Quick Look. Font files can also be dragged right out of the interface and on to the Desktop as well. The fonts in the Vault are stored in a master folder and not sub-sorted by letter folders (A, B, C, etc.). I am not sure this is a big deal, as it’s easy to access the fonts in the Vault with a right-click contextual menu item. Unlike FEX, Fontcase does not (at first glance) store your fonts in a Finder-like folder structure, and there is no option to only refer to the fonts when installing them. An initial aspect of Fontcase to note: it stores all your fonts in a custom file called the Vault – which is a fancy way of saying a small database file. And as I demoed Fontcase there was always that little voice in the back of my head asking “Is this good enough to switch?”. With that in mind, my primary comparison will be with what I know, Font Explorer X. And on that same note, getting a creative to switch font managers is probably the second cousin to the switch from PC to Mac (nobody switches the other way, do they?). Because of the time involved in sorting, organizing and become familiar with the font manager of your choice, most creatives are familiar with just one. A new version of FEX was just released (and it’s no longer free) which I think may have prompted the 1.0 release so soon after the beta period. I currently use the free version (1.2.3) of FontExplorer X (FEX) on a Mac Pro running 10.5.6 with 6GB of RAM. At the least, it put Fontcase to a real-world usage test. I have a relatively large font collection of 1200+ fonts, which should dovetail with the average designer. I signed up for the beta (pre-release) testing of Fontcase, and of course downloaded the 1.0 release, so I have been casually monitoring its progress. With a very stylish interface, some well-thought out features, and a price point aggressively below the other main font management apps, I think as Fontcase evolves beyond the 1.0 release they have a good chance of doing so. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t gunning for a more prestigious rank as well. So why a new font manager? I think Fontcase, the latest offering from Bohemian Coding, makers of the vector drawing app DrawIt!, is looking to fill a niche between Apple’s free Font Book and the other pro font management apps, and if so I think they nailed it. Suitcase Fusion 2, FontAgent Pro 4 and of course the formerly free FontExplorer X Pro have been around for some time and each is pretty well established. And I know what you’re thinking: “Don’t we already have enough pro font management apps?”. I am assuming readers of The Graphic Mac are aware of Apple’s Font Book that ships with OS X (and is pretty robust in 10.5), and are also aware of the limitations of Font Book, as well as the need for a graphics professional to use a third-party font management application.
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