Fontloader in the right-click menu
For anyone in the digital art field, like designers, illustrator, and photographers, having many fonts available for use is crucial.
We often need hundreds of them, and I can even say, thousands! It’s too much for our poor computer, or for the software we use, that has to load all of those fonts. And it often happens that we only need certain fonts for certain jobs, once in a while.
I advice you to use a certain program called Fontloader:
– it is 500kb in weight
– it is free
– it loads/unloads/installs/uninstalls fonts by just a right click on the font you want, or a group of them, or on the folder containing them!
– it supports TrueType, OpenType and TrueType Collections.
The program has been discontinued as a single product, but has been included in Shell Tools (1Mb), which is also free, and that you can find here. Shell Tools is a small collection of very nifty shell extensions (it adds easily accessible functions to your computer), but you can decide to just add Fontloader.
For managing fonts (viewing system fonts or your font collections, deleting, making groups of styles, loading/unloading/installing/uninstalling), you can try another free program called The Font Thing (1Mb). It is green software (some say « portable » or « standalone »), which means you don’t need to install it, just double-click it, and it will launch!
The Font Thing main window
I quote: « Browse installed and uninstalled TrueType fonts, viewing sample text, individual characters, and detailed font information. Easy font-management functions let you install, uninstall, print, copy, or delete any number of fonts at once. You can even store your own notes with them, filter them according to type (serif, sans serif, and so on), and group them into collections for convenience. This version lets you choose your font colors, set up drop-down lists of standard text samples, rename font files to avoid conflicts, and load fonts temporarily for use without installing them. »
It works well on Windows XP, no idea how it will do on other newer operating systems.
The difference between the 2 programs:
– Fontloader is one right-click away.
– The Font Thing does more, but needs to be opened, which is a waste of time when you just need to load a font/folder of fonts already well-organized.