The History of Font Runner
A short stroll down memory lane.
Font Runner 1
Back around the year 2000, Crux Technologies was busy fulfilling contracts for custom
programming and web site jobs. We had a computer that was used primarily for graphic
design work that had lots of fonts installed on it; however, anytime we needed to look at fonts
on this machine, we had problems. It was difficult and time-consuming.
As a result, we created a program that performed two main functions. First, it
allowed us to quickly look through fonts. Second, it allowed fonts to be used in
any running application even if they were not installed.
At the time, there didn’t seem to any shareware or freeware programs that were focused
on the same features, so, we polished the program a bit and sought to release it to the
public.
Right before release, we happened across another program that had the same name we were
going to use, so we changed the name of our program to Font Runner.
As luck would have it, the domain name, fontrunner.com was available too.
On December 18, 2000 we released Font Runner 1.0 Beta 1. After getting lots of great
feedback, we made Font Runner’s first official release on April 9, 2001. Thanks
to continued feedback from our user base, Font Runner would enjoy regular updates until
version 1.1 was released on July 12, 2001.
Font Runner 2
Although we were satisfied with 1.1, we continued to get so much great feedback that we
were compelled to update Font Runner and release another version. On September
9, 2003, we released Font Runner 2.0. We added a search function, a more intuitive
preview area and a favorites feature.
Font Runner 2.0 was much more popular that we could have imagined, but because it was
freeware, the amount of resources we could divert from income-generating projects was
limited. We fixed issues in Font Runner 2.0.x until 2006, but did not add any
new features or enhancements.
Font Runner 3
Finally, in July 2008, Font Runner 3 was released along
with Font Runner Pro.
In March, 2009, all features from Font Runner Pro were integrated into Font Runner and Font Runner
Pro was discontinued. The result was a single product with lots of great features at
the best possible price -- free!
