My app will be going along fine, and then all of a sudden the glyphs window won’t open. I have to reboot the app to fix. It’s already slow going to organize fonts with the edit attributes window having to be closed after every action. This is not helping an already frustrating situation.
Using Suitcase 8 on Windows 10.
Thanks for contacting us.
I am not sure I understand what is meant by the glyph window will not open. In Suitcase Fusion 8, the “i” symbol next to the fonts name should open a panel to view the glyphs from within Suitcase Fusion 8 (version 19.x).
I would suggest contacting our Support Team and filing a Support Ticket using the link below:
https://www.extensis.com/company/contact-us/
I click on “glyphs” and nothing opens up. If I close the app and reopen it, the problem goes away… but only for a while.
A common thread in the forums is the observation that Extensis doesn’t seem to know how the community uses their software. And after months and months of inaction, what other conclusion can be drawn?
Bear with me, I have a lot to get off my chest. Read on…
After reverting back to 7 and keeping a watchful eye on this forum for Extensis to set things right, it appears Suitcase in whole, or as a single-user product, may be coming to the end of its life. We saw the same thing with Extensis’ Portfolio (now strictly an enterprise offering). We’ve seen Adobe abandon Freehand and Fireworks after the Macromedia acquisition. Now they’ve kicked Muse to the curb (not that I care about Muse). And who can forgot the hubris of QarkXpress in the late ’90s?
I bring up these corporate decisions to kill off, or handicap products to illustrate what happens when a company stops paying attention to its users and, in the end, lose customers to the competition. Or worse, create new competitors these Goliaths never saw coming.
There was a case to be made for dropping Freehand: It was a direct competitor to Illustrator. Those of us in the Freehand community at the time viewed it as an anti-trust thing, as there were really no other viable alternatives to Freehand and Illustrator. And boy were we pissed. But, in the end it was killed off and we had to make due with AI. This is where my contempt for Adobe was born. Like Extensis, the lengths they go to to ignore their user community are superhuman.
But Fireworks? This is where Extensis really needs to pay attention. When Adobe dropped my beloved web design tool, it forced everyone into Photoshop. PS is terrible for web design, and guess who spotted that? The makers of Sketch (Hey Extensis? Where’s the Sketch plugin?). Now Adobe has dropped Muse, and with Dreamweaver a hot mess, is still trying to birth XD.
The world is moving on from legacy software companies like Adobe and Extensis with a new generation of software developers building tools they want to use (RightFont, Sketch, InVision Studio, Webflow). When you start looking around at the competitors — especially the newer ones — you get a clear picture of what the developers want for themselves, and what Extensis is missing, and what Extensis is emulating, albeit poorly.*
So, in the spirit of moving on, I have done a little bit of looking around at the competition in font management. This is purely from a Mac perspective, and the features I demand from a contemporary font management platform. If anybody spots something wrong or left out, add it in the comments.
As a side note, all other font management platforms I’ve looked at tout speed. They are clearly reacting to the sluggish Suitcase experience we all suffer through day-to-day.
What I want from a font management app in order of importance:
• List View (this would have never been on this list, let alone number one, if not for v.8)
• Tags/Metadata
• Cloud Sharing (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)
• Family fonts together
• Speed
• Free-form comments
• Auto Activation
• UX observations driving UI decisions (I’m happy to live with an outdated UI for a killer UX)
As of 04/17
Extensis Suitcase Fusion 8
Mac/Windows
https://www.extensis.com
Product Video: Ø
$119.95/59.95
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS IC AE) and QuarkXpress
Cloud syncing to Extensis controlled servers
Typekit & Google Font integration
No List View
Customizable Tags
Claim: “Browse, preview and select fonts easily” (Pfft!)
FontAgent
Mac/Windows
Product Video: Ø
$99/$59
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS FL AE IC), QuarkXpress, Sketch, Microsoft Office, Mac Apps (Keynote, Pages, Numbers), Affinity (Photo & Designer)
Cloud syncing to FontAgnet controlled servers via FontAgent Sync
Typekit, Google and SkyFonts integration
List view – they call it Table View
Metadata! Metadata! Metadata!
Customizable Tags
Free-form Comments (OMG — I’ve wanted this like forever – you can attach comments to fonts like its history, what it pairs with, what project you might have used it on!)
Claims: “Style. Smarts. Speed. More of What You Need.” “Modern, Adjustable Interface.” “Explore Using the Table View.” “Lightning-Fast Font Searches.” “More Metadata = Smarter Searches.” “Free-Form Comments and Tags.”
FontExplorer X Pro 6
Mac/Windows
https://www.fontexplorerx.com
Product Video: Ø
$99/$49
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS IC) and QuarkXpress
Provided Free Adobe CC Plugins for all registered users with last release of Adobe CC (Unlike Extensis)
NO CLOUD SYNCING (Not that I could spot)
Typekit & Google Font integration
List View
Customizable Tags
Integrated Font Stores
Claim: “FontExplorer X® is the simple, speedy way to find and organize all of your fonts.”
RightFont
Mac
Product Video: https://youtu.be/8caPhZqcFfU
$39 (Normally $49)
Syncs with any cloud drive apps/services such as Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud/Box/OneDrive/Resilio Sync/Adobe CC/Amazon Drive including local shared folders
Typekit, Google Font, Font Awesome, Ionicons, Material Design inclusion/integration
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS FL AE), Sketch, PowerPoint, Keynote, Affinity (Photo & Designer)
No customizable Tags – Plans on adding tags in next release according to an email exchange with RF
There appears to be no list view (But haven’t downloaded to check)
Claim: “3x times performance improved in RightFont 4” with 10,000 fonts activated
FontBase
Mac/Windows/Linux
Product Video: https://youtu.be/XCpqkaTJ49I
Free — Upgradable to “Awesome” unlocking additional features — $3 per month/$28.80 per year/$180 Lifetime
Syncs with Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud
Doesn’t have font auto activation (at least they didn’t mention it)
There appears to be no list view (But haven’t downloaded to check)
Claim: 4.25s lead-time of FontBase with 60,000 fonts
— — —
That’s all I got. Add your own thoughts to this thread and maybe we can all move on to something better. And again, this is from a Mac perspective. I didn’t cover Windows options such as High Logic’s MainType.
And… if there were anyone who could craft an Export/Import font tags/styles/foundries/metadata thingy that allowed users to jump to new platforms with ease, that would rule the world.
*It’s crystal clear Extensis sees a combination of FontAgent and the new upstarts RightFont and FontBase as their competition — or at least inspiration for the lousy UI of Suitcase. RightFont and FontBase appear to be geared more towards product design teams who typically don’t need access to the number of font alternatives visual designers need.
I sympathise, not to mention empathise, with just about everything you said, but with all the competitor product info you may find this thread removed, or at least heavily moderated.
You’re probably right.
We’ve all seen this happen over and over again with software we’ve come to rely on, and the thought of giving up on yet another platform is tough. The Ars Technica Quark article I link to up above is almost a step-by-step look back at what Extensis is doing to itself right now. And ironically, Adobe is now engaged in the very same thing that Quark did. Man, this forum is nothing compared to the outright rage over in Adobe land.
There are so many great quotes in the article that team Extensis should print on t-shirts, hang as a banner on their development factory floor, and blast through megaphones to remind them how fragile their success is.
Here’s one I particularly loved from a user’s perspective:
“…once you’ve switched, you’re done. As Quark should have known in the first place, it’s almost impossible to get people to go back again without a super compelling reason. Maybe they implemented all those awesome things in a later version, but we would never know.”
The first customer you always serve is the one you already have… they’re your bread and butter. And they’re your evangelists. If only Extensis understood this.
Ha. I just got a “Terms of Service” violation notice. It appears you can criticize the software, but not management. It feels like Gavin Belson over at Hoolie is running the show.
Here’s part of the postscript that Extensis took down that I believe doesn’t violate their terms of service:
PS: To Extensis: I spend my days at a medium size Ad/Web agency working for the biggest REDACTED on the planet (among other big REDACTED companies). We deliver bug fixes and site enhancements daily to the e-comm platform we built and maintain for them. What’s your deal?
We would like to view the issue directly. Please create a Support Ticket and one of our Support Agents will be in contact with you and provide some next steps. - Thanks.
As anticipated, Apple has begun their transition to moving away from 32 bit applications in their most recent OS update.
Like many other software publishers, Extensis has begun it’s work to make our applications 64 bit compatible for all future OS updates.
As described above, we will continue to keep customers informed as updates become available.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Cheers,
Chris Meyer
Sr. Product Manager
Extensis Product Team
Please see the following help article here about this issue:
I found this to be a strange way to be welcomed into Suitcase 8, with all the greyed out fonts.
There is also no mention of this in your intro videos anywhere.
I would strongly consider to undo this greyed out text in your next update as it makes it less visually engaging to peruse non active fonts. Just my two cents. Thanks.
Hi I followed the instructions to back up my archive from Suitcase 7 to Suitcase 8 when I first launch the Suitcase 8 app. It finished creating the archive but it has been “Cleaning Up…” for 2 hours now. Is there something I can do to fix this? Is there a workaround?
thanks
Andy
Hello. Please try using the following article to assist you with resolving your issue:
If the steps provided do not resolve the issue, please click the contact button in the upper right corner of the page and select Support & Services to contact our Support Team.
I have been the IT manager at a printing company for 22 years and we’ve been using Suitcase since MacOS 9. I also write software and am a bit of an interface snob. The MOST IMPORTANT thing in printing or design is to communicate CLEARLY. The same could be said for software interface. A user should be able to quickly and easily make sense of the data you’re displaying. The new interface in Suitcase 8 is completely broken. The loss of the column view is unforgivable.
Compare the 2 screenshots below (the top is Suitcase 8 and the bottom is Suitcase 7). Be honest - which one is easier to read? Which one presents the information more clearly and efficiently?
The Suitcase 8 preview is a sprawling mess of closely packed type in different sizes and shadings and at a glance it is very difficult to isolate pertinent information. In Suitcase 7 you have a MUCH better layout in the preview pane in terms of the spacing - and the gray font names are less distracting. AND OF COURSE, there’s the column view on the bottom where selecting a single font or family limits the preview above to exactly what the user wants to see. SIMPLICITY.
Please bring back the old interface. I’ve reviewed and tried other font managers over the years and always stuck with Suitcase. It used to be clearly superior. Not so much any more. If I don’t see changes soon, I will probably jump ship. Our prepress operators and designers are complaining and productivity has suffered.
Agree totally. The fact that Extensis is still completely unable to explain why the new interface is better really speaks volumes. Suitcase 8 is an object lesson in poor UI design and abysmal product management.
Agreed. I moved to FEX. SF8 also jacked with Skyfonts and FEX seems to work well with it.
Hi, Rocket–I’m sorry, I missed your post two weeks ago. Mea Culpa! Actually, I moved to High-Logic Main Type. I much prefer it over all the other alternatives, and it has Adobe CS plugins as well.
Man, Extensis must really be ignoring this thread! I’m truly gobsmacked that they continue to be so bloody obdurate about what is obviously a very, very unhappy userbase.
On way to help rebuild galleries after being lost in this fashion is to create a field named galleries, then add the gallery name to the assets inside it whenever you add new assets to any gallery.
Yep, I’m over Suitcase Fusion. I refuse to negotiate while being held hostage. Locking me out of version 7 without plugins is a deal breaker. I’m taking my business elsewhere. Thank you for your well thought out post with other options. Have you jumped ship yet?
