Filed under: Macworld, Software, Graphic Design
Show floor video: Extensis Universal Type Server
We had a quick visit with Kelly from Extensis and a demo of Extensis Universal Type Server, an upcoming workgroup management package for fonts. Administrators can control font sets and lock down user preferences, including for mobile users, and both server and client are cross-platform, Leopard and Vista friendly. Pricing not yet established, but the product should be shipping later this year. Video after the jump.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John P. said 7:26PM on 1-17-2008
Wow! This actually looks like an honest-to-goodness departure from Extensis ServerCarpWare(TM)*. I use/manage both Portfolio Server and Suitcase Server X1, and both seem to me to be hacked-up versions of the clients. This looks like they are actually re-inventing their product, and it looks promising. This might explain why, when we purchased Suitcase Server X1, Suitcase Fusion had been out for a while, and had been a Universal Binary while X1 (server & client) never made the leap. I hope this bodes well for portfolio, a product I dearly want to like.
*misspelling intentional
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Chris Corbell said 9:26PM on 1-17-2008
I'm an engineer on the project - hope I'm not giving any secrets away here :-) Yes, this is an honest-to-goodness client/server architecture! The server is a J2EE webservice hosted in a real application server, JBoss - though it still has a nice shrinkwrap-style installer so you don't need to be a sysadmin to deploy or manage it. And it has a lot of extensibility potential for future workgroup-related enhancements and variations (database, security, use by other product lines, etc.)
We're all excited about the new architecture and pushing to ship it soon - as soon as it's 100%!
John P. said 9:48PM on 1-17-2008
Sounds great! I don't mean to harsh on Extensis, largely the products work... and both servers streamline deploying/managing both fonts and content. It is just painful as both are lacking something, and I never felt the price was totally worth it when managing the server end. The site for the new server really shows an intriguing departure from that "server-but-client" feeling that the current products have.
(I will say, font issues have gone away since getting X1 server. Either that, or people aren't telling me :D)
macxprt said 10:00PM on 1-17-2008
FontExplorer Forever!
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Kelly Guimont said 11:26PM on 1-17-2008
Thanks for my 15 minutes of internet fame! As Chris said this is really cool stuff and we can't wait to ship it. We took the ideas people told us they liked from both Suitcase and Font Reserve servers and then built an entirely new server from the ground up. It's going to be AWEsome.
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Jeff said 3:35PM on 1-18-2008
Thanks Kelly, your demonstrations were very helpful at the show and in the video.
The new interface looks really great. I can't wait to upgrade from Font Reserve Server. Hopefully Spring 2008 will be more like March and not May or June. I am also hoping to get into the Beta.
Lucien said 11:38PM on 1-17-2008
Chris,
You won't get in trouble by posting! :)
As he said, it's true client/server, using the latest technology on both. I'm an engineer on the Mac user interface that Kelly showed in part of her demo, and we're using Cocoa to build what I think is a really great client..
I hope you can give it a try when it ships John, or get on our beta list, and let us know what you think.
:)
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Russell said 4:00AM on 1-18-2008
I don't even know what this thing does, and as a college student I'm pretty positive I don't have any use for it personally.
But I always like when people who actually work on a product comment on some post about it. It gives the impression that its actually a product made by people who care about the product instead of just wanting to get in, collect their paycheck and go home. I wish more businesses would encourage their employees to comment on projects that they are working on, at least within the limits of trade secrets and the like.
I'm so impressed that I'm going to go try to figure out what exactly this thing does.
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Robert Hammen said 12:58PM on 1-18-2008
The big problem with the previous version was not the interface, but the robustness of the product. Fusion came out and was worse than X1 in that department. We ended up abandoning the server product, and then Fusion itself, due to too many bugs/issues with incorrectly reporting fonts as "corrupted" when they were not. We're using Linotype FontExplorer now, and not having issues.
Before anyone flames me as an Extensis hater, I've been using Suitcase since the first version in 1987/88 (bought it from Steve Brecher at MacWorld)...
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