FontDropper: The Best Tool Yet for Web Font Exploration
Extensis, which provides a webfont service called WebINK (see New Web Font Services Expand Choices), has launched the coolest tool yet for experimenting with web fonts: the FontDropper.
You don't need a WebINK account to use this; just go to the FontDropper page, scroll down until you see the bookmarklet, and drag it to your browser's bookmarks bar.
Then, view any site whose fonts you want to explore changing, and click the bookmark. It runs some JavaScript that displays a font selector, and then you can simply drag any font to any block of text on the page, and it instantly updates!
Of course, there's no changes made to your source files, since FontDropper has no access to those; all the changes are made in the local copy being displayed in the browser. It's sort of like Firebug for fonts. Try different fonts until you get the look you like, and then set it up in your page's code to make it permanent.
You can get a feel for the possibilities this opens up in just a few minutes. Highly recommended.
© 2012 Webvanta Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Reader Comments
4 comments
very cool
From: seancho, 08/20/11 12:50 PM
Fontdropper is cool. Does anyone know if there is software that will do the same thing for a local font library? I want to dynamically test fonts I already own and use on live web pages. Its such an obvious idea, it has to exist, but I don't see it anywhere. Anyone?
FontDropper
From: Amanda, 08/ 9/11 12:50 PM
Michael- wow, thanks so much for the post. we encourage everyone to give us feedback so we can continue to improve this utility.
cheers.
Font Dropper
From: girish, 08/ 9/11 01:53 AM
Excellent tools ... really helpful
Thanks!
From: Thibaut, 08/ 8/11 08:03 AM
Thanks for posting, very useful tool that I will for sure use!