CoffeeCup software have been around since 1996, producing inexpensive focussed solutions for web authoring problems. Some of their work has been taken on board by the big guys: for instance, Adobe Dreamweaver now includes some of the Flash-based text graphics available through Website Font. But CoffeeCup goes a little bit further and provides a neat package which carries out its single job well.
Twenty-three fonts are supplied on installation and new ones can be added through downloads or by purchase from CoffeeCup’s suppliers, Baseline, JoeBob and LetterPress. New fonts must be in a .png or .swf format. Users can create their own .swf fonts from TrueType fonts (like those used by Windows) via the free sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) conversion package also available from CoffeeCup.
Website Font 4.0 operates via a single dialog box. The user enters some sample text and selects a font from a list at the base of the screen. To the right of this they can select options for size, color and alignment, whether to use different colors to indicate hyperlinks, and whether hyperlinked text changes color when the mouse pointer hovers over it. At the far right users can either choose a predefined effect from a drop-down list, or define the effect they want by manipulating settings for Drop Shadow, Bevel and Glow. Newly created settings are stored as an XML file which can be called up for re-use later. A mini-preview appears in a panel at the top of the screen, but a full preview of the effects on a web page can be called up at any time with a toolbar button. Other toolbar buttons allow the user to open existing projects, import font files, access the resulting HTML code and add and remove tags from the list. There is a Help menu item which opens a brief but fairly comprehensive PDF file.
Once the user is satisfied with the appearance of their text they can assign it to an HTML tag name. This can be either an existing tag or a new tag name, e.g. <FLASHYTEXT>, which the user has invented. CoffeeCup recommends using one of the heading tags, <H1> to <H6>, but the method could be applied to any text-related HTML tag.