You Control: Fonts - 1.3.1

I have a very stable (basic, clean, and unsullied) OS (10.4.11) with all pertinent updates.

Very simply, my Mac runs "rock solidly."

And, when I try applications like this one that are obviously buggy, I know it's *not* my system. When an application gives me trouble (like "You Control: Fonts" has), I know the *application* is TROUBLE.

This one quits spontaneously every time I try to use it. I gave up after about ten minutes of Open-Spontaneously Closing cycling. The program got deleted in short order.

When this is out of "beta," I'd like to try it --- again.

In the mean time, "one star" for good intentions?

What evah.

aloha . . .

I installed 1.2b1 today on my powerpc after falling in love with the other You Control menu software, I figured i'd give their other products a try. first i downloaded the 1.1 release only to discover it did not work in my design apps. I poked around and found this beta available. Downloaded, installed it (had to force quit the running YouControl process to get the beta installed) and tested it in all my daily apps, indesign cs2, illustrator cs2, photoshop cs2, mail.app, word and excell, textedit. it worked in all apps but photoshop cs2.

the way that the You control font menu organizes itself is far superior to that which is default in the wysiwyg CS2 or osx font menus.

so then i set a hot-key to bring up the font menu and started working in illustrator cs2... select some text, hit the hot key and you have a well organized wysisyg 'marking menu' with all your fonts! my jaw dropped...

this is hands down the most fluid and natural way to work with changing type that I have come across. as a graphic designer i work with a lot of different fonts, this hotkey feature is amazing. when they get it to work in photoshop cs2 it well worth the price for any professional or type enthusiast.

the beta also doesn't seem to integrate with the other You Control menu as well as the previous release but with a few clicks you can get it positioned.

I don't really need this when I work with Microsoft Excel 2004, PowerPoint 2004, or Word 2004, since each of these programs already has a sufficiently adequate font menu. I did need it to work with some cocoa applications, but contrary to the product's description, this is not always the case. Some examples include Mellel, Smultron (I don't really need it for this one, though), and NoteBook.
As a matter of fact, with one cocoa application it actually interferes and I have to quit YC Fonts before working with that application.
I wish I had tried FontCard or FontSight before purchasing this one. FontCard seems to work fine with the applications I use, although it can be a bit slow. Hopefully You Software will eventually finish fixing its many programs, including YC Fonts.

FontSight only works with Cocoa apps, not with Photoshop and Quark. In this and some other respects You Control: Fonts is superior. It doesn't change some fonts in Photoshop as it should, but just having a WYSIWYG font menu there is a big improvement. Why you get native support for WYSIWYG fonts in Adobe Illustrator but not in Photoshop or InDesign is a puzzle to me. And, since I use InDesign more than Quark, I tested YCF in InDesign and found it works there, too, even though InDesign isn't listed as a supported app. If it continues to perform reasonably well during the trial period I will not hesitate to pay for it.

...Stone Design's FontSight. It's cheaper and works with ALL Cocoa apps that support text entry. FontSight also doesn't phone home. Customer support is also fantastic--if FontSight runs into a problem with a font (like incorrectly displaying it), Andrew Stone fixes it within 24 hours. Upgrades are for life.