Testing Fonts on the Web with TypeTuner

TypeTuner is an upcoming browser extension that allows the user to apply a local font to any web page, as well as to configure values for variable font axes. In this talk, Mew will present the inspiration and the process of creating the extension and provide a technical overview and a demo. She will also share how the tool fits into her type design workflow. For type designers, seeing their fonts in use outside of the font editor can be an important part of the design process. In situ, certain characteristics of how the letterforms function together may become more apparent than when they were in isolation. If you’d like to test fonts on the web, at minimum you have to create an HTML document and set up the font face declaration and the font family in CSS. This alone can be a time-consuming process. To use an existing web page, the web inspector will let you inspect and modify the fonts that are already embedded or installed on your machine, but what if you’d like to test out a font you’re working on? TypeTuner wants to make this easier.