Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zy1t 3658 days ago
This redesign is awesome, but I think it might have killed my side project.

I’ve been working on a site that offers google fonts with better visuals and search by font feature (x-height, stroke contrast, etc) functionality.

Sunk 30+ hours into it designing + coding up the front end while my friend works on programmatically tagging the font on the backend.

I want to continue working on my project, but it now feels a lot less relevant. Any advice, HN?

For the curious, here's a wireframe of the main screen:https://www.dropbox.com/s/vzobxm2a2ul9y5l/main%20search.png?...

3 comments

IMHO, if Google has scratched your itch, then I think I would find something else that needs to be done.
I'd love to see a search interface for all webfonts, powered by an open database of data from across all the major webfont providers. If this interface is independent of Google fonts, then you can apply it to any set of font data.
You could generalize the tool, so it also works for other fonts?
That's a good idea. I'd have to look into how to get copies of licensed fonts to analyze. Actually paying for a license would make this project completely unfeasible.
If you get the basic product up and running, I'm guessing the foundries might give you a license just because you might be able to drive some business to them. There may even be an affiliate angle that could be worked.