It's a Menlo world in the new Snow Leopard Xcode. 10.6's Xcode uses the Menlo Regular-11 font for the standard Xcode template. If you miss Monaco (and I know I did), it isn't hard to restore the look and feel of Xcode 10.5's defaults. That's not to say there's anything wrong with Menlo. Menlo is a lovely font. It's just not a familar font and some strange part of my brain keeps freaking out every time I look at the screen.

I'll probably force myself to adapt to Menlo at some point but for the moment, I'd rather just stick with Monaco. So to do that, here are some quick instructions. As you'll see you'll need to create a new theme based on the Xcode default theme and update its font settings.

To start, open Xcode > Xcode Preferences (Command-,). Choose Fonts & Colors. Select the Xcode Default theme and click Duplicate. Enter a name for the new theme (e.g. Normal Xcode Theme) and click OK. Select the new theme, and then select all categories within the theme. To do that, click on any item and then choose Edit > Select All (Command-A).

With the categories all selected, double-click in the font column. A font panel appears. Select Monaco 10 in the font panel and then close the panel. Click OK in the preferences pane and boom. You have returned to a font comfort zone.

Got any Xcode font preferences? Can you recommend a font that's better than Menlo, Monaco, or the good old standby Courier? Let us know in the comments.

If you're a graphic designer, hopefully you're familiar with WhatTheFont, the essential service from myfonts.com that helps identify a font from a photo or other bitmap image. Now, MyFonts is bringing that power to the iPhone.

With WhatTheFont for iPhone, you can take a picture using the iPhone's camera, and use the WhatTheFont to identify the font in the image. No more guessing -- or even waiting until you get back to the computer. WhatTheFont is even useful to iPod touch users -- the software identifies fonts in images saved from Safari, screenshots, or other images in your photo library.

WhatTheFont requires internet access to work, since it connects with myfonts.com to perform the image analysis. It's free, and available in the App Store.

[Via Swissmiss.]

TypeDNA is previewing its advanced font management software at Macworld booth 4037, and gave TUAW a sneak peek.

TypeDNA (also the name of the product) is cross-platform, standalone font management software that also includes some advanced features to help you select fonts based on similarity and type features. Along with standard activation and grouping features, TypeDNA includes Font Harmony and Similar Fonts tools to help you select aesthetically-compatible fonts for your projects.

TypeDNA will begin a public beta program soon, with an eye to releasing the software in March. If you want to sign up for TypeDNA's public beta, you can.

One of the first things users noticed about the new Safari for Windows beta is that Apple is using their own font smoothing technology (found in OS X) instead of the Windows standard ClearType. Joel Spolsky has an interesting discussion of the different approaches Apple and Microsoft use with respect to sub-pixel font smoothing. Basically his conclusion is that Apple, coming from a desktop publishing background, "believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface as much as possible" even if that means some onscreen blurriness, whereas Microsoft sacrifices letter shape "to prevent blur and improve readability." Joel notes that it's not entirely obvious which is the superior way of doing things, though predictably Mac users prefer the Apple way and Windows users the prefer the Microsoft way. In the end, however, this is likely as much a result of familiarity as anything else.

For my part, I've always thought the Mac way of doing text just looked right. Thanks to Joel I now understand why; definitely worth a read.

[via Red Sweater Blog]

Continuing our new The Little Things series that highlights the often-overlooked polish and underrated features that make Mac OS X such a joy to use, I thought I'd highlight one of those 'guy behind the guy' features that makes Apple's OS so gorgeous: font anti-aliasing. Nerdy, I know, but check out the screenshot: Windows, even XP, doesn't support this feature system-wide like Mac OS X does, and it shows. Type looks like garbage in everything from desktop icons to most applications and their menus on Windows. Mac OS X, on the other hand, supports anti-aliased fonts from the ground up (to my knowledge), so everything from System Preferences to desktop icons, text editors to iLife and more are incredibly legible and lickable.

Some call it a minor detail, but given the undeniably pleasant usability this brings to the OS, I would argue it's one of those trademark additions that Apple's engineers don't receive enough credit for.

Update: As many people pointed out Windows does, in fact, have a similar feature called 'ClearType,' which some consider superior to OS X's (though it is a matter of taste). The key difference is that ClearType is disabled by default, which in effect means that most Windows users have no idea that it is even an option. Another case of Apple paying attention to the little details, though Vista will have this feature enabled by default.

One of the things I'm sure we all love about Mac OS X is how integrated so many of the apps and services are with each other, but did you know that integration can stem all the way down to the fonts and colors you use amongst your apps? In almost any input-based, Cocoa-written app you're running (Firefox, for example, is not written in Cocoa), you can press cmd + t to open a simple, unassuming fonts palette that you've probably seen at one time or another. But if you chose a particular font and size that you like in one program, you can click on the gear in the bottom left of that panel and chose 'Add to Favorites' which places it in a category aptly named Favorites on the left side of that panel. The beauty of this is that any other program that has access to that system-wide fonts palette can also make use of the fonts you mark as favorites. For bonus points, click and drag the dot at the top of that panel to reveal a preview area (pictured) where you can see what your font is going to look like before running with it.

Next up is the Color palette, accessible with the cmd + shift + c shortcut. This palette employs the same basic concept: you can use it to find a color you like, and then drag a swatch of that color to the white squares at the bottom of the panel to save a version and share it amongst your other Cocoa-based apps.

These little built-in tools can be really handy when working across many apps in Mac OS X. You can set a favorite font in Yojimbo (or your choice of other junk drawer apps), and then use it when chatting with a friend in Adium or iChat. Use a favorite color for highlighting in OmniOutliner? Why not save it for the next Mail message you have to send, or those Final Cut Pro and Motion projects coming down the pipeline?

By no means are these a revolution feature of Mac OS X that'll rake in the switchers, but they might just make your daily activities go a little bit smoother.

This is one of those widgets that makes me wonder why Apple hasn't already made one. Type Cast is pretty simple and straight-forward: it's a font preview widget from Code Line Communications, makers of Art Director's Toolkit (amongst other things). This widget isn't short on capabilities either; you can navigate font families, styles and sizes with merely your keyboard, and you can even be taken directly to the font file in the Finder.

The Type Cast widget is free and available from Code Line Communications here.

Typographica, a journal of typography, is listing their favorite fonts of 2005 in a two part series. If you're anything like me you have a number of fonts littering your Mac that you have accumulated from various websites.

Typographica gives the nod to Liboa, Freight, Ministry Script, Garamond Premier Pro, Deréon, Promixa Nova (my favorite of the bunch), Zingha, Vista Sans, Cézanne Pro, FF Maiola, Maple, Garda, Litteratra, and Relato. Keep in mind that this is just part one, people. Read the post to get the details and see samples of all the fonts.

What is your favorite font? I have a soft spot for Rockwell, myself.

We've mentioned the most excellent (and free) Linotype FontExplorer X here before, and I figured its most recent update was worth a mention. A host of new features, updates and bug fixes have been issued including: Illustrator CS/CS2 plug-ins, copying to clipboard from the font preview will copy sample images, new Keynote support and Pages scanning, fixed multiple font deactivation, fixed crash on import of corrupt fonts and much more.

If you're on the hunt for better font management than OS X's built-in Font Book (who isn't?) that's in the range of "free" and you haven't picked up a copy of Linotype FontExplorer X, you really ought to either kick yourself or, as a better choice, download a copy and get crackin'.