fonts

PopChar has been around since nearly the dawn of time, at least in terms of the Mac operating system. PopChar started as a Turbo Pascal-based substitute for Key Caps, created on a Mac Plus way back in 1987. Its core functionality remains the same today, helping users insert unusual characters directly into documents--choosing from an increasingly arcane array of strange and foreign symbols, across thousands of Unicode-supported characters, all without having to learn any difficult key combinations.

Similar to the built-in Character Palette and Keyboard Viewer in OS X, PopChar X is accessed from your menu bar (or with an … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature where we answer questions e-mailed to us by readers. This week, we have questions on only enabling specific fonts with Font Book, a iPhone migration or upgrade question about current apps, and a specific question on an article we wrote regarding "Fast Browser Search" being used as the search engine in Safari.… Read more

In an attempt to move beyond drab typography on the Web, Google on Wednesday released 18 freely usable fonts and an open-source tool designed to smooth over browser issues in displaying downloaded fonts.

A number of Web designers--if not all readers--are excited that newer browsers support downloadable fonts so sites can use more than the handful that it's safe to assume are installed already on people's computers. For every eyeball-searing grunge font and blood-pressure-raising instance of Comic Sans, there's a tasteful use of an artful logo or distinctive text.

But font licensing rules mean a Web designer … Read more

Troubleshooting fonts can be one of the most frustrating endeavors, since many times small changes can result in small and unexpected behaviors, including application interfaces not loading, but more commonly garbled text. Many times applications will install their own fonts in the global or user library, which in itself may be enough to cause a conflict with existing fonts.… Read more

Watermarks are an important part of image processing if you want to share your images online without the fear of having them ripped off by unscrupulous strangers. uMark Professional is an extremely versatile, yet easy, way to leave your mark on your images, letting the whole world know that they belong to you.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive, with its features arranged in four separate tabs. Users simply select the image or images they want to watermark and then adjust a series of text and logo options. uMark allows users to enter text and then specify its … Read more

Mozilla helped to bring it to fruition. Microsoft and Opera joined to sponsor its standardization. And now Google has decided to add support for WOFF, the Web Open Font Format, to its Chrome Browser.

"It appears that we have decided to implement WOFF in Chromium," said Chromium issue tracker Friday. He said he'd be writing the support in a way that converts WOFF to TrueType fonts for internal handling by the browser.

WOFF lets browsers download typefaces associated with Web pages, letting Web designers customize their sites' appearances. Currently, most Web sites use a small set of … Read more

With a surprise boost from Microsoft, the promise of rich typography on the Web just got a big step closer to reality.

The software company's involvement emerged Monday with sponsorship of a newer effort at the World Wide Web Consortium to standardize Web-based fonts with technology called the Web Open Font Format (WOFF). It's a fresh indicator of Microsoft's serious engagement with new Web standards--and it's a big boost for designers' attempts to stretch the Web beyond just the few typefaces that today can be expected to be already installed on people's computers.

It's … Read more

If you're having a rough start to your Monday, sit back, relax, and take a look at the iPhone Font found at Urikane.com.

It's a perfect way to start your week.

Rather than simply use apps on the iPhone, the designer--whose name may actually be Uri Kane--decided to create a font out of the multitude of applications in Apple's App Store. Even better, each letter is color-coded, which must have made it even more difficult to develop.

In a video showing off the letters that were created, the designer wrote that the font was developed from … Read more

pdfMachine is a multifeatured program that allows users to convert documents into PDF files with a variety of extra options. Unfortunately, although the actual conversion is quick and easy, we found the rest of the features quite unintuitive.

We tried several times to review this program and kept putting it aside, thinking that it wasn't making sense because we were tired or distracted or otherwise mentally unprepared to deal with it. We finally came to the conclusion that the problem wasn't with us. The program's interface looks nice enough, with a sleek design and attractive graphical buttons. … Read more