We hope you’ve had as much fun as we have playing with the new version of FontBook this week. Thanks for making it the #2 reference app in the App Store within 24 hours of release!
Welcome to new users of the app. If you’ve been loving FontBook for awhile, here’s a summary the goodies we added this go ’round:
- FontBook is now universal and runs on iPad 2 (and later), iPad Mini, iPhone 4 (and later) and iPod touch (4th gen. and later)
- Adapted user interface for iPhone
- Favorites and preferences sync between devices via iCloud
- New font class “Non-Western”
- 150 new font families with more than 1800 fonts
- 16 new type foundries
- New app icon
- iPhone only: search filters (class, designer, year, foundry)
- iPhone only: customizable one-liner sample text
- iPhone only: result pages as list view
Left: The FontBook App homepage offers the familiar access to the world of type: class, designer, year, foundry and usage. Right: Filters supply even more precise search results, for example “All geometric Sans typefaces from Font Bureau, please!”
Left: One of four type sample pages of a selected type family, in this case the sans serif Nobel. Right: All typefaces marked as favorites at a single glance, with editable sample text.
7 Comments
Couldn’t find a feedback form in the app, so here’s a question: how do I navigate the font name screen easily? After 5 swipes, I’ve got as far as Armada. It will take some dedicated swiping to get to Univers…
Apologies for the delay, Pete. I’ve forwarded your inquiry to the dev team.
Dear Pete. When you know the name of a typeface (family) e. g. Univers, we strongly recommend the full text search. Just touch the magnifying glass and start entering the search term. For that reason we’ve discarded the alphabetical font name search in the iPhone version 3.0. Although we know that in same rare cases it my help, e. g. “I remember that the typeface name started with a J, but I forgot the rest.”
Yes. Perhaps you could introduce a list scrolling thing like iTunes songs – those big lists aren’t so easy to navigate through… Even a great app like yours can bear tiny improvements!
Hello. Is there a way to use Fontbook App 1.182 without an internet connection? Wifi not always available. On the original version of the purchased app I was able to see all data with no Wifi. Any suggestions?
Sorry, You forgot one thing new in FontBook 3 for iOS… It’s ultra slow when scrolling, zooming and general navigation—unbearable on an iPad4. I wish I didn’t ‘upgrade’ and hope you repair it soon.
@Rmg7 With Version 3.0 we’ve decided to deliver the app without any type sample images. The reason for that was that hundreds of users had been unhappy with the apps size of 600 MB. Especially with the universal app that now runs also on 4 Gen iPod Touch (16 GB) a size of 600+ MB would be unacceptable.
@ Ascender Please check the latest version 3.0.1. We’ve improved the cache management for iPad user. Please go to the app’s home page, type settings, and give the app at least 100 MB cache. When you run through a navigation the 2nd time you will notice a speed improvement of at least 2x.