Reveal Your Fonts’ Hidden Secrets with Wakamai Fondue

Mike Rankin

Once in a while a piece of software comes along that is so cool that it actually makes you do a double take to be sure you’re not imagining things. Such is the case with Wakamai Fondue, a website that will reveal every last capability of a font with a simple drag and drop. Erica Gamet wrote about it back in Issue 114 of InDesign Magazine and it’s only gotten better since then with enhanced features in a beta version.

When you drop a font into Wakami Fondue (or click the circle to upload one) you can see all its metadata, including the license:

Test it out with customizable sample text:

View its layout features:

And character set (in categories or Unicode order):

And grab some useful CSS to implement the font on the web:

Note that all the magic takes place inside locally inside your browser. Fonts are not uploaded anywhere, which would obviously be in violation of most commercial font licenses.

If you’re really curious (and really nerdy) you can see how the whole thing works with the code posted at GitHub.

The whole thing is free to use, but if you find it valuable there’s a Donate button on the Info page that you can use to express your thanks and amazement.

Wakamai Fondue is the brainchild of Roel Nieskens, a self-described “front-end developer, color font guy, font hacker and computer nerd from hell working as consultant” in The Netherlands. You can check out more of his work at pixelambacht.nl.