Looking for Recommendation for Font Manager that supports Auto-activation

[Chris Panny]

Windows 10 64 bit; Adobe CC 2018; Extensis Suitcase Fusion 8.0

Can anyone recommend a font manager that supports auto-activation, like the Suitcase Fusion program does? I've been using SF since version 4 for Windows and with the past few releases I dislike the interface more and more. I find I'm spending too much time playing tech support to get it to work. Also, the plug-in for Word and PowerPoint - Suitcase Attache doesn't always work - I have to keep reinstalling it periodically. Overall, I'm disappointed with the direction SF has taken. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[Zenderamsterdam]

I must agree, Suitcase Version 8 sucks so hard...

1. It's much slower then it's predecessor.. fontlists take a lot of time to load now, why?

2. it misses the nice list on the bottom with the overview of all the fonts in the list

3. The fonts that have to display my lists are too big, so I can't see very clear what the lists are supposed to say,

and if I move the menu to the right to make it bigger it just jumpes back? (for users it should be much better if I could choose the menu fontsizes)

4. and most anoying are the big fontsizes, stars and info icons that now make it harder to see when choosing fonts, it's just too much visual information. It was much better on the rightside...I already deactivated the group font in families because that makes it even worse to look at...

5. And last but for sure not least. If I have a font folder how can I arrange all the starred fonts to show first? or activated first?

This was always an option in the previous version...

So i'm also looking for software that can do this!

Or I have to go back and reinstall CC2017 and Suitcase 7, because that version does work for me....

[Chris Panny]

I was in direct contact with an Extensis developer during the 8.0 beta testing. I brought up the same issues Zenderamsterdam raised - specifically 2 & 4. Version 8 also did away with the ability to type in multiple lines of text for previewing purposes. This was called Paragraph mode. For branding, this is a must, since I want to see names, phrases, etc. in title case, uppercase and lowercase simultaneously. Why offer useful features and then take them away with a new release? This new version of SF offers the opposite of a smooth work flow.

I've been testing out something called MainType for Windows. So far I feel it's got a better, more flexible interface. It has a lot of panels to perform various functions, organization, previewing, etc. with the ability to hide panels that are not needed. There is a free version and two other versions - Standard or Professional - that require a fee. The Standard looks like it'll do what I need, for $49 US. It doesn't have extension panels that display in the CC programs, but I never liked SF's previews in the apps anyway. I end up using the stand alone manager, so this is not a huge problem for me.

I'll keep testing it and if there are any major flaws or GUI issues, I'll repost my findings.