WebDev3000 » Fonts

Google Font Directory

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:27:55 +0000

Less than a month after Google Analytics Application Gallery, Google strikes again! That time, it was about various apps for Google Analytics, now it’s all about fonts, since the name says it all – Google Font Directory.

Another Beta product from the Internet search giant, Google Font Directory allows you to browse all the fonts from the tiny collection already available via the Google Font API. Just as it happened with the Application Gallery I mentioned earlier, there’s not much to see here now, but things will surely change in the future. Why am I saying this? Think about the two sides of the coin: to font creators, Google Font Directory offers a quick way to reach a lot of people looking for free fonts, while web designers will surely enjoy having access to such a resource that contains fonts covered by an open source license!

For a bunch of details and sample code, please click one of the large text snippets located on the main Google Font Directory page. That’s all, folks!

myFontbook

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:10:12 +0000

When talking about font collections, I have plenty of them. The only problem is that I have to check my CDs and DVDs catalogue to find the locations of those archived font collections. To make things even more interesting, I have at least a dozen archives on different disks, so… Web-based services like myFontbook are clearly better than my old-fashioned approach!

To go straight to the demo mode, just click here. Pretty cool, don’t you think? Even more, you can register for a free account, and you will also get some extra features, especially the ability to tag & categorize your fonts and find them easier in the future!

Additional features allow you to display a custom text in the preview area, and you also get a gylphs view pane for quickly scanning characters and symbols. At last, there’s also the font metrics view, which shows guides for the text baseline, default kerning, and median height. Sure, you can even print your fonts with a single click, but let’s not reveal it all, shall we?

Compatibility: any major browser, but beware – script blockers may cause various problems!

Fenotype Typefaces

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:07:10 +0000

Sometimes, finding a resource with less content, but only top-notch quality clearly compensates for the low quantity of material, and unless you’re one of those who are simply looking for sites with thousands of font sets to choose from, I am sure you’ll enjoy Fenotype Typefaces A LOT!

Currently, the fonts available on this site can be downloaded and used for free (you’ll be getting the demo versions, anyway), but if you’re going to put them inside some commercial project, it would be recommended to purchase them. Prices are rolling around 20€ for a font, with special sets being also available for purchase and allowing you to save some money (as I write this, there are two 99€ sets, and one priced at 149€.

I don’t know what else should be said, since I am really stunned by some of the fonts present here. Oh, yeah – apart from the demo fonts I mentioned, there are also some freeware ones, only that the best looking ones – at least to my eyes – are belonging to the other category…

Compatibility: the site will surely work with any major browser, while the fonts come in ZIP archives and different formats, just as expected

The Font Pool

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:35:32 +0000

Last time when we talked about free fonts, it was the perfect day for 1001 Fonts to step forward. Now, the time has come for a new fonts resource, and since there aren’t exactly that many serious competitors in this area, choosing The Font Pool wasn’t exactly a gruesome task…

… and since it was (almost) a pleasure to pick it, let me tell you why it could be a pleasure for you to use it! Ready or not, here’s the short story about this promising fonts resource known as The Font Pool…

Unlike other similar sites, The Font Pool doesn’t have any membership available, everything being available right from the start… or so it seems. Currently, there are 47,755 fonts available, all nicely categorized, with customizable previews and, in most cases, both Windows and Mac versions.

The big problem is that most fonts I looked at were available from MyFonts, another fonts site… and not for free, unfortunately. Even worse, some of them have ridiculous prices, going up to $60-$70!

Since you can’t search for free fonts properly on The Font Pool, I guess that’s all this site is about – bringing together fonts available on other sites and linking to them. While I consider this to be a very unorthodox approach to delivering design resources, some may consider this a useful website, and that’s why I talked about it today.

At last, speaking for myself, my all-time favorite remains 1001 Fonts. Anyway, that doesn’t mean 1001 Fonts is the best one out there… only that I still haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for.

Compatibility: The Font Pool is a really straightforward site, and since its design doesn’t use Flash or any other similar technology, it should work well on any browser you can think of

1001 Fonts

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:53:25 +0000

Looking for free fonts on the Internet is a pretty tough job, because most resources you’ll find will also contain paid ones, and since I can’t say I ever bumped into a website full of free fonts, and nothing more, I guess that 1001 Fonts is the best site to start the series of short articles about free fonts available online with…

While 1001 Fonts offers free membership with some nice features, like custom font viewing and filtering settings, the ability to write font reviews and so on, the major problem with this site is what I consider to be excessive advertising, especially the use of popup windows and animated banners, but since it does its job well, let’s see what 1001 Fonts has to offer!

Obviously, there aren’t exactly 1001 fonts available on this site. To be honest, I have no idea how many are there, but you should know that we’re talking about resources made available under the following license terms: freeware, shareware, postcardware, demoware and charityware. Most of them are available at least as Windows and Macintosh TrueType, with some also being offered in a PostScript version, and only a few in PostScript versions for both Mac and Windows.

Downloading the fonts is as easy as 1-2-3, so I don’t know what else should be said here. Just a reminder – take a good look at the license type before using a font in a project of yours, that’s all, I guess. Other than that… good luck and a lot of inspiration!

Compatibility: as you noticed in the article, you can get Windows and Mac fonts, both TrueType and PostScript, while the simple design of the website shouldn’t get you in trouble at all, no matter if you’re using Opera, Internet Explorer 7/8, Safari, Firefox, or Maxthon

ASCII Generator

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:58:20 +0000

ASCII images and text may seem like something belonging to an age forgotten, but the truth proves to be quite different. Think about having to develop a website from scratch, and having a client who also wants you to setup everything that’s related to it, including email accounts and signatures coming with them. For some dark reason, your client only wants ASCII signatures with his name and company headline, and won’t settle for anything less. What would you do in such a situation?

Obviously, you can waste a lot of time and curse everything from Heaven to Hell while trying to do what the client wants, using some text editor and aligning everything “by hand,” but why not use a smart solution like ASCII Generator?

While it won’t convert bitmap images to ASCII ones (I’ll get to this in the future, there’s quite a lot of fun to be had with ASCII images… and you never know when such a tool could come in handy), ASCII Generator allows you to enter some text and get a nice ASCII graphic representation to use as email signature or for some other purpose (I can’t think about any such purpose at this time, so please drop a comment and enlighten me!).

When talking about options, there are enough fonts/styles to choose from, as well as a few basic settings, like width of the graphic, reflection mode, alignment, or stretching. That’s all!

Compatibility: no problems here, since ASCII Generator is a pretty old website, so it doesn’t really matter if you run it in Opera, Internet Explorer 7/8, Safari, Firefox, or Maxthon