Typetester Public Beta Goes Live
The Typetester is finally fixed and here it is – the public beta. A big thank you to all the guys for their invaluable help and suggestions. OK, enough talk – take a look at the Typetester.
Still here?
Still here? Interested in more details? Well, the Typetester is an online application, that can be pretty useful when you need to check or choose a typeface for your (next) project. You can easily set up a typeface with the most of the options applicable for the screen type, including the colors of the text and the background. The color fields will accept any meaningful format – wether you type #f00, #ff0000, rgb(255,0,0) or red – it’s all the same. There is also nifty color picker, which pops up when you double-click the input field.
Fonts from user’s system are pulled into a web page (big thanks goes to the smart guys from UP). This way, I don’t have to worry that I missed some font and you don’t have to type your favorite typeface by hand. However, if your browser doesn’t support this feature for whatever reason, the application will degrade accordingly, but unfortunately, you’ll have to type-in font names letter by letter. You can just stick with those from the predefined list and save yourself a trouble.
There are some more handy features, but I don’t want to spoil the fun of exploration.
How it all began?
First, there were just some rudimentary functions, which enabled quick setup and preview of the fonts. It started taking more serious approach, after my fellow colleagues showed a great appreciation for this kind of tools and encouraged further development.
The core functionality was already there. What was missing was more pleasant and usable interface. So I went into it more deeply and added features along the way (that’s why the code is still a mess).
During the further development, a few type savvy fellas took a look at it and requested for some more features. I still have some things on my mind, which I’d like to add, but right now, I feel that I should take a break a few days and then look at it from another perspective. After all, let’s first see what the response will be to this first public version.
I want details
There’s so many things to talk about – why some decisions were made and what solutions were applied. But since I’m expecting some overseen bugs reported in a next few days, I’d rather leave some space for that. More in-depth explanation comes soon. Promise.