14 DAY TRIAL // Each PC host hundreds of fonts and the vast majority remain unseen and unused by most users. Ready to help us discover them all and see how they would look like on real or virtual paper, here comes FastFontPreview.
Going through folders to seek out and glimpse at fonts manually is something nobody wishes to go through, especially if you think at the massive number of typefaces that usually find shelter on our systems. It's evidently a task for the brave and experienced and the perfect candidate seems to be FastFontPreview.
This freeware utility has it all written in its very name: it is made for previewing fonts on the go, but it is by no means limited to this. In fact, this software that comes in the form of a 1.22 MB installer can be easily turned into a portable companion. All you need to do is copy on a memory stick or any similar device the main executable from the application folder after the setup is complete.
The tool runs minimized in your system tray, thus staying out of the way by not clogging the taskbar, as most programs do. Once you start it, you'll notice that immediately the 'Fonts' system folder is loaded, with all its contents ready to be thoroughly inspected.
The interface is very user friendly and actually quite nice looking. The GUI is divided in two main areas: one that accommodates the explorer and another for showcasing samples for the fonts stored in the selected directories. The separator placed between these regions is dynamic, enabling you to resize either of them as much as you please.
A thinner portion on the right side of the application is reserved for the color picker that can be used to customize the appearance of fonts and background they are written on. The left click designates the nuance for the character, whereas the right-click will change the canvas from the default white to one of the other 15 available colors.
Hovering the mouse cursor over various elements will reveal some handy tooltips on the lower part of the main window. Also, if you glance at the title bar, you'll see the number of True Type fonts contained in the location you're currently browsing. In order to copy any of the loaded files, all you have to do is just drag and drop them from samples view to the shell folder tree on the left.
An important mention worth making at this time concerns the supported file types. FastFontPreview is able to display and manage True Type and Open Type fonts in TTF format. However, the software offers only previews for PostScript Type1 (Adobe), PS Open type(*.otf) and TrueType Collection(*.ttc) fonts.
When displaying the typefaces, this utility provides some information in the preview pane that includes the names of both file and font, as well as the current status. More precisely, it will tell you whether the character is installed onto your system or not. By clicking any of the items listed in the same tab, on the lower section of the main window you'll see the copyright and version details, the location on disk and even the family and subfamily it belongs to.
The right-click menu enables you to install the font, view the Character Map, the Windows file properties and the standard sample for the selected TTF. There is yet another command that you can activate to see the font names in the preview tab instead of the default text. Except for the last mentioned function, the other four can also be accessed from the 'Open' and 'Font' menus placed in the main bar.
The application's options are anything but complex. You can set the character size and input a personalized demo text that can be saved and used again when the program is restarted. A similar behavior is selectable for the last opened folder. By ticking a check box you can turn an endpoint into a start point, namely make the directory you visited at the end of the previous session load when the program initializes. Finally, the two settings left available are for minimizing the utility to tray and showing a splash screen at startup.
If you're thinking about resource usage, CPU and RAM stress, leave any worries aside. This little tool leaves a barely visible footprint on your system, only the memory is noticeably put to work, in fact only 10 MB of it are sufficient to have everything displayed quickly and smoothly.
Likewise, it must be mentioned here that not only is this software free of cost, but it can also be made portable in a flash. The executable can be carried on a removable media, it requires no external dependencies and leaves no trace behind. To sum it all up, this is an easy to use freeware that serves well its purpose of showcasing fonts without a twitch. Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
The Good
The Bad
The Truth
This article is also available in Spanish: Organizador y visor de fuentes
