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« Lifting the veil

The press releases aren’t out yet, but at work we just came out with a Windows version of the Suitcase Fusion 2 font manager. The web site is live tonight and you can buy it or download it and try it for free for 30 days. All-​new Windows version jumps two versions to finally get feature parity with its Mac counterpart. This is one of the big projects I’ve focused on in the last few months at work. Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately… more soon.

3 commentsto “Lifting the veil”

  • August 20, 2009
    Richard Fink wrote

    Thomas,

    I’ve been using a competitor’s font-​management product for some time. (Windows) On features, Suitcase looks like it blows it away. You might want to consider a price for upgrading from your competitor’s product(s), as well. Might be smart business.

    [Glad you like what you see. A bunch of people worked very hard to make it so. I’ll pass on your competitive upgrade suggestion, though of course verifying ownership could be difficult. – T]

    I’ve got one beef – the Extensis site is a little too cute about the price. The upgrade price is easy to find and featured (“starts at $…”) but what am I in for as a new user? Looks like I’ve got go through a rigmarole to find that out.

    [Well, like I said, the actual announcement wasn’t up yet, and a few other pieces were still to come as it was breaking news. But the price is pretty clear in various places now. Expected street price is under $100 for the full version and under $50 for the upgrade. – T]

    With the onset of @font-face (makes it sound like a disease, right?), I suspect that a lot of people are going to become more font-​aware and need utilities like this to dynamically install and reinstall fonts as they test web pages. It’s very easy to get tripped up when you’ve got the same font you’re calling with a link from your web page installed on your machine. At least I’ve found it tricky. It’s too easy to get a false result.
    Also, in connection with web fonts, I’m planning on doing a side-​by-​side roundup of products like in the near future on Readable Web.

    That’s my 2 cents for today. The product looks great.

    Rich

  • August 20, 2009
    Michael Rowley wrote

    Expected street price is under $100 for the full version and under $50 for the upgrade’

    That’s what I expected when I went to order the upgrade, but the price went up to $65, a 30% increase. I realize you’re not a marketing man, but why the difference?

    [I gather that would be the “international” price instead of the US price. – T]

    I like the product, if it does what it says.

  • August 24, 2009
    Richard Fink wrote

    >But the price is pretty clear in various places now.

    What happened was when I went to “Buy”, it asked me for the country I lived in as a single-​entry form on it’s own page.
    The web being what it is and users picking up habits from what gets done on other sites, this led me to believe that I was going to be quizzed – getting my email, registering, who knows what – before even being able to see the price.
    (This kind of “at least get them on a mailing list” UI happens a lot.) I had other things to do and clicked off.
    When I went back. Once I got past that “what country are you in” page, there was no rigmarole as I had feared/​anticipated.
    You might want to tell the web site guys to integrate that page into the main form and just assume a default of USA or whatever. That’s 4 cents now.

    rich

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