Resources for Web Development Students @ Robin’s Blog

There are times that you may want to use a font in a graphic program without installing it to your system. Having too many installed fonts uses valuable system resources and slows down your computer. Fonts are installed in the folder C:\Windows\Fonts (winnt\fonts on some systems). While MS says you can have as many as 1,000 installed fonts, you may start running into problems around the 500-800 mark. This of course all depends on your system memory and other computer components. There is actually a registry key that controls fonts and when it is full you can no longer install fonts.

While you can delete fonts, you should be careful when doing so; if you delete system fonts, you could cause more trouble. Fonts that you shouldn’t delete from your system (C:\windows\fonts) are: Arial, Bookman, Book Antiqua, Century Gothic, Comic Sans MS, Courier, Garamond, Georgia, Haettenschweiler, Impact, Lucida, Microsoft Sans, Modern, Monotype, MS Outlook, MS Sans Serif, Palatino Linotype, Roman, Script, Small Fonts, Symbol, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, Verdana, Webdings, Wingdings, in all their various incarnations. Sue Chastain at About.com also has a list of fonts that should not be deleted from a Windows system. Before you delete any fonts, you should make a copy of the fonts folder just in case. Visit Microsoft’s Typography site to see what fonts are installed with all Windows systems and Microsoft programs. Note: These are usually the best fonts to use in XHTML documents because they are available on all Windows systems.

Instead of installing tons of fonts, you can keep a separate folder of fonts on your hard drive. I store the fonts that I don’t use all the time, but I want to be able to access quickly in a separate directory called fonts. Hummm, that’s pretty simple.

When I want to use a font that is located in C:\fonts, I open the folder and double click the font name, a font preview window will display; minimize the preview window. Open the program that you want to use and the font should be available on the program’s font list. You must open the font preview, minimize the preview, then open the graphic program. If the graphic program is already open, the font will not be available. If you need to edit the image that uses the font, the font preview must be opened and remain open whenever you are editing the image/file that uses it. I know this trick works in Paint Shop Pro, Fireworks, and Photoshop.

There are additional fonts available in the classroom on our server for your web projects. They can be accessed in Windows Explorer on drive pm on ‘rop’ (J:). On the J:\ drive there is a folder called webclass with a fonts subfolder. You can use the above directions to temporarily use the fonts in this folder.

To install fonts, right click the Start menu and select Explore. Open the Windows folder on drive C:\ (Click show contents of this folder if necessary). Select the fonts folder from within the Windows folder. Click File > Install New Font. Navigate to the J:\ drive and select the webclass\fonts folder. The available fonts will appear in the list of fonts. Click the font that you want to install/use and click OK. Note: You can select more than one font by holding down the CTRL key while clicking the font names. The installed fonts will now be available for use in all installed applications. If an application is open while you are installing fonts, you must restart the application in order for the fonts to be available. Please do not install all of the fonts in the J:\ drive on your system. There is a folder which contains a printout of all of the fonts on drive J:\ on the top shelf of the bookcase (next to the closet) .

Of course there are also tools that you can use to manage and view your fonts, here are a few:

1. Font Lister – Is a font utility that allows you to view and install fonts on the fly. You can also print all of your fonts installed on your system. This is a very handy program! There is both a freeware version and a shareware version that costs $5.00. This is an old favorite of mine; I’ve used it on and off for many years.
2. FontList – This freeware utility quickly creates an HTML file of all of the fonts installed on your system. This is great for on-line viewing and printing.
3. The Font Thing – A very nice font utility that allows you to browse installed and uninstalled fonts, print font samples, install or uninstall fonts, load fonts for temporary use, rename fonts, and sort and group them. I really like this font utility!
4. NoNags – Lots of different freeware font utilities. Be sure to check out all the other free programs on the site.

If you’re looking for more fonts, I have some links on putertutor.net. There are probably broken links there, I need to validate, but there are good links too.