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We know some of you have been too. So it’s with a twinge of holiday blues that we announce a postponement. But only a twinge, because there’s good news too.
Like Santa’s elves, our designers and developers have been cheerily working away on new features, bug busting and adding more web fonts, fuelled by a steady diet of Hershey’s kisses, macaroons from the city’s Christmas market and lashings of tea. But like the North Pole, no toy makes the sleigh without passing quality control. So we’ve been scrutinising our app in light of user feedback, system reports and all of the wonderful input we’ve received from those of you we’ve met in person.
Our QA elf’s verdict? Typecast is darn promising, but it still has too many rough edges for our liking. We can do better. So we’re pushing back our public launch. We figure it’s better to give an awesome present late than give an ok present that ends up at the bottom of the toy box.
To the sanding & finishing department
Over the coming months, we’ll be refining Typecast to make it a tool that’s easy to use on real projects as part of your everyday design process , not just one that’s ‘promising’ or fun to play around with using sample copy.
Planned improvements include:
- better stability (we’re going to sort out those error messages);
- more fonts for you to choose from; and
- a way to test rendering on various devices.
We believe that getting these right will make Typecast a truly wicked tool for experimenting with web fonts, perfecting your typography and rapid prototyping – whether you currently design in the browser or prefer using your offline design apps.
So many people on the ‘nice’ list
For those of you using the beta, it will be business as usual. You will still be able to access your account plus enjoy these improvements as they roll out. If you signed up for the original Typecast app at typecastapp.com, we’ll be asking you to transfer your account to the newer beta this week. Then in January, we’ll add another batch of people from our waiting list.
We’d like to thank all of you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, positive feedback and candid criticisms. They’ve been terrific motivation for our team and have driven these improvements.
Finally, we’d also like to thank everyone who requested an invitation and has been waiting patiently for an account. We would never forget you. We’ll continue to release accounts in small batches so we can manage everyone’s feedback efficiently. In short, when we’re ready for you, we’ll get Typecast down your chimney straight away.
Until then, it’s back to the workbench for us and a very happy holiday season to you all!
