FontAgent Pro for Mac User Reviews
Spectacular
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"Excelent (better) replacement for Suitcase Fusion"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.120
Pros
Supports CS5, Has a great bunch of people behind it (great support). Finds more diffs/dupes than ANY other font manager. FAST!
Cons
The interface is somewhat dated but this is not something you'll deal with daily. I would like to see some tools/info for font comparisons other than face (eg #of glyphs, chars...)
Summary
I was excited to get CS5 but disappointed as a long-time Suitcase Fusion user to discover that Extensis hadn't bothered to come out with an update. I started looking around and it came down to Font Explorer X and Font Agent Pro. After evaluating the two programs (and Extensis support was silent about the issue) I called Insider Software to discuss some questions. They were great. In fact they offerred me to purchase FA Pro for the price of Font Explorer Pro. Call them, they'll likely do the same.
I posted that offer o n the extensis forum and that is the only thing that got attention from the support folks there - they deleted it. Three time. Now Extensis is saying the CS5 compatibility is a paid upgrade due later this year. Yikes. So say come to your own conclusions but I recommend you at least give FAP a good look. -
"wwwww wwww wwww wwwwwww"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.3
Pros
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Cons
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Summary
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"I really want this app to work for me but..."
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
4.01 at least, does not behave in a civilized way.
Making sets involves some non-intuitive steps. Or maybe I should say the dialogs and descriptions are not intuitive. The app tells you that it will delete the originals you are moving so make sure you have copies. But isn't the new collection that FontAgent is about to make, a copy? I think rather than the app itself being faulty, the wording is unhelpful.
FontAgent promises to check all my fonts looking for corruption. And it does find some. So why must I put up with endless notifications during actual use, that this or that font is corrupt? I do a re-start for example and I then must tolerate endless irritating dialogs that a dozen or more fonts conflict with system fonts. Well, don't activate the dammed things then! I didn't ask you to activate them and they are not in my start-up set.
Besides, they behave ok after those warning dialogs have gone.
Auto-activate notifications are a pain. They ride on top of everything else and I must wait for them to disappear.
I moved all fonts except the system/library/fonts to a separate location to avoid inadvertently activating more than just my preferred start-up set. Yet my apps sometimes show me the entire set of fonts. Thousands of them! (On other launch occasions, FontAgent will randomly activate nothing, leaving me with only a dozen system fonts available to use. Very annoying.)
I also think the interface is poorly-designed. Panes too small to be useful, Appearance is boring system 9 style.
I have been using Macs since 1988 and I am not any sort of novice. Yet I am constantly confused by fonts in general and management apps like this one, in particular. i really really need a strong, professional font management tool. FontAgent Pro is not it. Unfortunately, I don;t know offhand of one that is what i want. But I'm determined to find it if it exists. -
"Font problems are gone since we switched"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.3
Pros
Very fast, intuitive and amazingly accurate auto-activation; We can even use it for our Windows designers.
Cons
Wish it had a glyph palette
Summary
Have tried other products, including earlier versions of FontAgent Pro. Version 2 was good, but slow. Version 3 was very good and this latest version is smoking fast with a bunch of great new features. It even finds fonts by keywords, but I don't know how they do it.
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"Had to downgrade."
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I've used version 3 of Fontagent Pro for a long time and found it beat the pants off of every competitor out there. Recently I upgraded to version 4 and found it buggy to the point where I was drawing comparisons to Suitcase X1. It would randomly auto-activate fonts that had nothing at all to do with what I was working on, slow my system to a crawl in Illustrator, occasionally tell me that a font I had been working with had suddenly gone corrupt (that is, until I restarted the computer, at which point everything was suddenly hunky-dory again) and generally eat up hours of my time as I watched spinning beach balls every time I worked with certain font families that I *knew* were good. I sent a report to Insider Software but have heard nothing back, so I've gone back to version 3.32, the last good, stable version. I'll still recommend this software, just not this version. -
"Amazing Control and Ease Of Use"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I have been in the pre-press and design since 1991. My company has to manage over 6,000
font families which equates to to almost 20,000 individual typefaces. We handle ad inserts
and national coupon campaigns for over 200 national retailers and restaurants.
We have tried Suitcase then Suitcase Fusion and Font Reserve. None of them ever did what we
needed. They were slow and had bugs. (One tip, to keep the font caches clean I feel that getting
the Font Agent Pro with Font Smasher bundle is the ideal solution and a great value.)
Font Agent Pro has been a real boost for font management in the world of OS X. It is accurate,
fast and maintains fonts at a level that is unprecedented at this point. The way it even has an
easy setup feature to install the font auto activation plug-ins and Xtensions is just one indicator
as to how user friendly Font Agent Pro is.
I wish all software worked this well. -
"FontAgent Pro Best font manager ever!!!"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I've been using FontAgent Pro since it was released way back. (version 1) I've also used all the other font managers. As a designer I need something robust that can handle 5000+ fonts and work effortlessly in the background without causing me problems.
FontAgent Pro is the only font manager that fits into this category.
You use free font managers or you can waste your money on Suitcase or any of the other but at some point you will end up getting FAP and wonder why you didn't change sooner.
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"The BEST one out there"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I tried Suitcase Fusion. It didn't even have a mechanism of simply showing the fonts in WYSIWYG way! And dragging fonts to "sets" was a pain.
FontXPlorer from Linotype is nice, but it leaves a lot to be desired, for instance when I activate a font, I want it enabled FOREVER, not only for my current session until reboot, thankyou. Scoured the preferences but some basic features are missing.
OSX's default "FontBook" is nice enough for simple people but not for typophiles.
Enter FontAgent Pro. Everything you want. Excellent interface, shows fonts easily, groupings/sets work like a charm, and the preferences are clearly laid out so you KNOW what's up.
Highly highly recommended. -
"Best Font Manager"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I started with MasterJuggler in Classic (wasn't classic back then) and moved on to Linotype FontExplorer for OS X after deciding that I couldn't stand Suitcase - I used it for the longest time, but it was so inconvenient. I was relieved when I discovered FontAgent Pro. It acts like MasterJuggler -- invisible until you need to change a setting or add fonts to the library. It is also very stable and better at auto-activation than the other applications. I couldn't work without this program - there's no way I could go back to FontExplorer. -
"Works for me"
Version: FontAgent Pro 4.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Installed with no problems. The help systems states these as the changes for 4.0.2 - 1. Added keyboard commands for Actvate, Deactivate, Import, Export, Show in Finder and New Smart Set.
2. Improved import and verification engine.
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