02 Mar 2005

The Knowledge of All Font

The Font Thing is one of those bits of software I always install on any Windows PC I use. Yeah, it’s old (last updated 1999), and there are countless font browsers out there, but I’ve not found another that’s free, as easy to use, and lets you quickly browse fonts that haven’t been installed.

Whenever I start a design project I fire it up, put in some suitable sample text, and rapidly step through dozens of fonts from a few categorised folders, installing anything that looks promising. Later I can go back and remove unused ones.

Apple’s Font Book is OK but only covers installed fonts, so I’ll have to install hundreds on my PowerBook and reorganise them into Font Book collections to get near the same level of usefulness.