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#1
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
I changed the browser so I did a basic check at panopticlick.eff.org only
to find that my system fonts are basically making me unique no matter what browser I use on WinXP or what IP address I have. Is there a trick to just the system fonts that everyone else has, so that I can delete the ones that are making me unique? I know fonts get scattered about depending on what is installed but what I'm asking is if there is a common cleanup program (like ccleaner is for other stuff) which cleans up non-standard Windows XP fonts. Does such a font cleaner exist? |
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#2
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
Jonas,
You have not told us which browser you use, but a browser like FireFox allows you to change its "user-agent" string, even allowing you to disguise yourself as a fully different browser. https://superuser.com/questions/9879...-user-agent-vi a-aboutconfig Regards, Rudy Wieser -- Origional message: Jonas S Schneider schreef in berichtnieuws ... I changed the browser so I did a basic check at panopticlick.eff.org only to find that my system fonts are basically making me unique no matter what browser I use on WinXP or what IP address I have. Is there a trick to just the system fonts that everyone else has, so that I can delete the ones that are making me unique? I know fonts get scattered about depending on what is installed but what I'm asking is if there is a common cleanup program (like ccleaner is for other stuff) which cleans up non-standard Windows XP fonts. Does such a font cleaner exist? |
#3
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
"R.Wieser" wrote:
Note: Wieser puts attribution lines before his reply making it appear the quoted poster said his reply (nothing to do with the top- versus bottom-posting argument). Attribution order was corrected. Jonas wrote: I changed the browser so I did a basic check at panopticlick.eff.org only to find that my system fonts are basically making me unique no matter what browser I use on WinXP or what IP address I have. Is there a trick to just the system fonts that everyone else has, so that I can delete the ones that are making me unique? I know fonts get scattered about depending on what is installed but what I'm asking is if there is a common cleanup program (like ccleaner is for other stuff) which cleans up non-standard Windows XP fonts. Does such a font cleaner exist? You have not told us which browser you use, but a browser like FireFox allows you to change its "user-agent" string, even allowing you to disguise yourself as a fully different browser. How would changing the web browser's UA string help? If he is using Firefox, that stat buries him within the entire community of Firefox users to make him NOT unique. If he uses a Google Chrome Chrome UA string then he is hidden amongst all those users. If he uses a UA string that differs from the rendering engine in his real web browser, sites may not function properly. For example, if he uses a mobile web browser UA then the site may present a less functional, reduced size, or stripped web site along with one that doesn't present an entire page but keeps appending content when he scrolls to the current end of page (the page keeps growing). If he used a unique UA string then obviously he would be highly identifiable. That site can rely ONLY on the number of visitors that have used it as their sampling on which to judge uniqueness. They've only had 215,282 visitors, plus that community does not represent the typical user community (it is not a proper random sampling) hence results are highly skewed. This is like visiting a forum and wondering why everyone is reporting problems with a program. Users don't visit forums to deposit glowing product reviews there. They go to the forums to get help. You think 200K for a /non-random/ sampling size accurately reflects the entire web surfing community of 3.4 *BILLION* users (http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/)? If you use an extension to randomize canvas reads, this site won't test that. They assume whatever value your client returns to them is static. So using a canvas blocker will not reflect that your value changes on every canvas read to eradicate that value from their fingerprint rating. The panopticlick rating has little value. Extremely small sampling size which is not random, doesn't reiterate the test to check for varying results (e.g., canvas and webgl reads), and weights the rating of each fingerprint component by the "one in X" value which is based on just that non-random small sampling. Considering that few users do not disable DOM Storage in their web browsers or clear it upon exit from the web browser, that fingerprinting is irrelevant. A site can use DOM Storage (instead of cookies) to track you. They don't check for the window object's name (not what you see in the titlebar but the object name) which can be used to track you between pages (I've used it instead of Referer). If you save Site Preferences in Firefox, there is a known hack that creates a unique hash across Firefox sessions. This site won't test that because it would have to remember your values between sessions which means you would need to have an account there, do a test, unload the web browser, re-login, and continue the test. The point of testing how big a fingerprint you have is to determine how effectively you *might* be tracked but using only that scheme. I've found panopticlick to be of little value as to how visible I am regarding trackability. It is a poor measure. It has little value in tracking YOU. I could have a very low fingerprint rating at panopticlick and still be easily tracked if I didn't lock down the web browser (as much as possible since some are more configurable than others). |
#4
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 13:13:05 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
How would changing the web browser's UA string help? If he is using Firefox, that stat buries him within the entire community of Firefox users to make him NOT unique. If he uses a Google Chrome Chrome UA string then he is hidden amongst all those users. While we can pick a UA string for the most common browser for the given platform, the UA string will have zero effect on the system fonts. The classic technique to lower your fingerprinting level is to work down from the worst offender, which for me is not my UA string but my total collection of fonts on the system. If there was a "font cleaner" like there is a "crap cleaner", that would be ideal as all I want to do is pare down my fonts to whatever fonts are most common on Windows XP systems today. The way to do that is to get rid of the fonts that are not common. But how does one accomplish that easily? That site can rely ONLY on the number of visitors that have used it as their sampling on which to judge uniqueness. They've only had 215,282 visitors While that is partly true, that's besides the point. Panopticlick has been around for years, and they reset their numbers periodically, so I've been unique in the past (mostly due to odd scree size, incidentally) out of six million users, the number of users only has to be at a basic level to give you an "idea" of how bad your fingerprint is. My fingerprint is bad. Real bad. Mostly due to fonts, surprisingly. It wouldn't need to tell me anything more if ten million people used that site. All it would tell me if ten million people used it is that there are ten or twenty other guys like I am, but that's still way too easily fingerprinted. While you'd love to be in the millions, what you can realistically aim for is to be fingerprinted to the low tens of thousands, but certainly not the low tens. plus that community does not represent the typical user community (it is not a proper random sampling) hence results are highly skewed. Again, it doesn't matter. What matters is how easily you are fingerprintable. And, what property of your system is causing you to be most fingerprintable. In my system, the font list is what is causing me to be easily fingerprinted. Unique or not, tens or not, it's still the fonts that are most different on my system from yours and the guy next door and the lady across the street. All I'm asking for is whether anyone knows of a font-cleaner program (sort of like how crap cleaner works) that will clean out the non-Windows fonts easily. Otherwise, I have to become a font expert to root out all the foreign fonts. That's possible. But I'd rather not become a font expert. I'd just like to get to a list of fonts that is the same as most others have. If you use an extension to randomize canvas reads, this site won't test that. They assume whatever value your client returns to them is static. So using a canvas blocker will not reflect that your value changes on every canvas read to eradicate that value from their fingerprint rating. Canvas blocking isn't my biggest problem. Fonts are. The panopticlick rating has little value. I understand what you're saying because you're interpreting the value of the results totally differently than I am. It's like my son takes 50 and divides by 5.12345 and then gives me an answer that is out to twenty digits when the answer is really just "10". All I want from panopticlick is for it to tell me which is my "worst" offender. And for me, there is absolutely no doubt that it is the fonts on my system based on their report. That result isn't likely to change even if they had ten million viewers. I've found panopticlick to be of little value as to how visible I am regarding trackability. It is a poor measure. It has little value in tracking YOU. I think you interpret the results differently than I do. I look for the worst offender. You seem to care more about the individual values. I place little to no meaning in the individual values because the weakest link is the issue. It's like the French putting so much trust in the Maginot line that they didn't bother having a strategic reserve. What Panopticick told me was that I need a strategic reserve which is I need to reduce my fonts to a level that is more like what most people have. I can become a font expert to do that, or, I can find a program that does that for me. If the program was easy to find, I wouldn't even be here. The only question I'm asking of you windows xp experts is whether you know of an easy way to get the fonts back to what most people have. I could have a very low fingerprint rating at panopticlick and still be easily tracked if I didn't lock down the web browser (as much as possible since some are more configurable than others). I don't know how you're using Panopticlick, but I use it simply to tell me the worst offender. Then I fix that. Then I move on to the next worse offender. And I fix that. At some point I run into something that I can't fix, but by then, I should be in the range of a lot more people. I already did this once where my screen resolution was so odd that it was the worse offender on a system that was pretty darn clean. I fixed that (which wasn't intuitive because I couldn't change the screen itself) but that's what I'm doing here. All I'm asking of windows experts is how to get the fonts back to what most people have. Any ideas on that question? |
#5
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 18:56:13 +0200, "R.Wieser"
wrote: You have not told us which browser you use, but a browser like FireFox allows you to change its "user-agent" string, even allowing you to disguise yourself as a fully different browser. Thanks. I see that Vanguard explained already that this is about the system and application fonts installed on the entire Windows PC. What happens is that panopticlick runs a Java (or Flash?) program which reveals to the web server *all* the fonts on your system. From that, they can "fingerprint" you (in addition to other things). It's hard to explain if you've never been to panopticlick, but if you go there once, you'll see that they list a dozen items which they use to fingerprint you, where your job is to look at the worst one and fix it. For me, the worst one is that the fonts scattered about on my WinXP system pretty much make me unique. So the question is merely whether there is an *easy* way to get back to whatever fonts that most systems have, where I surmise the easiest way to do that is to find a "font cleaner" (similar in operation to how ccleaner works for example). Does anyone know of such a font cleaner for WinXP? |
#7
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 14:11:17 +0000 (UTC), Jonas S Schneider
wrote: I changed the browser so I did a basic check at panopticlick.eff.org only to find that my system fonts are basically making me unique no matter what browser I use on WinXP or what IP address I have. Is there a trick to just the system fonts that everyone else has, so that I can delete the ones that are making me unique? I know fonts get scattered about depending on what is installed but what I'm asking is if there is a common cleanup program (like ccleaner is for other stuff) which cleans up non-standard Windows XP fonts. Does such a font cleaner exist? Yes, and I use it. It's called "Font Frenzy". The homepage went down years ago, so you will have to search for it. It's portable, and keeps backups, in case you have to restore fonts for an app. []'s Found it: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...nt_frenzy.html -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#8
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 18:55:57 -0300, Shadow wrote:
Yes, and I use it. It's called "Font Frenzy". The homepage went down years ago, so you will have to search for it. It's portable, and keeps backups, in case you have to restore fonts for an app. []'s Found it: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...nt_frenzy.html Thank you for helping on the question of where to find a "font cleaner" application. I put it in my c:\progs\cleaners\{recuva,ffrenzy,ccleaner,dupclea ner,etc.} directory, which seemed like the appropriate category for the start menu. That site sure does *hide* the actual link even though there are more than a half-dozen "download now" buttons (for other things). :-) I think this is the actual download link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmirr..._frenzy,1.html http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmirr..._frenzy,2.html http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmirr..._frenzy,3.html etc. Here's the description of the program: Font Frenzy 1.5.152 Quote:
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#9
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 22:38:14 +0200, "R.Wieser"
wrote: And by the way: What *I* ment to suggest is for him to look at his browsers UA, and remove the parts that make him stand out. Nothing more, nothing less. I realize you were responding to someone else, but just to explain further, all I'm "trying" to do is attack the biggest fingerprint problem first. It's a normal way to approach such things since you never know which fingerprinting technique sites will use. If I knew that the UA string was the "most important", I'd attack it (but it's so easy to spoof that I wouldn't bother with asking since there are extensions and methods abound to change the UA string). The problem on the fonts is that I am just looking for a program to make my life easier. Sure, I can manually do anything but then I have to learn more about fonts than I need to 'if' ... if a program already exists. It's like building my own "ccleaner" or "irfanview" or "vlc". Sure, I probably can become an expert in each, but the hope is that someone else already specialized in that. To that end, this thread is really here to only ask the one question of whether anyone knows of an existing "font cleaner" which will identify all the non-standard fonts on any WinXP computer, and allow you to easily delete them. |
#10
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:04:27 +0000 (UTC), Jonas S Schneider
wrote: Font Frenzy allows you to strip away all your excess fonts and restores your system to only the fonts that are essential to Windows, giving you the maximum performance speed possible. Read more at: https://tr.im/1ZVw2 [/quote] More after I use it... The program installed quickly and went where I wanted it to go. c:\progs\cleaners\ffrenzy\ It didn't create a desktop shortcut for my custom start menu, so I just cut and paste from the "programs" menu the font frenzy shortcut into my own start menu (Start Menu Cleaners FFrenzy.lnk) It came up with a list of "Installed Fonts" and five buttons Defrenzy -- removes all fonts except those shipped with Windows XP! FrenzySnap -- font snapshots to use to restore original fonts Refrenzy -- reinstalling fonts after taking font snapshots FrenzyMan -- font management like delete, view, add, etc. FrenzyInfo -- it's the help menu I hit the "FrenzySnap" button to make a snapshot of existing fonts. Then I hit the "DeFrenzy" button to remove all but WindowsXP fonts. http://i.cubeupload.com/5ZS5GI.gif Surprisingly there were 357 fonts removed, with only two errors: Error 1503: Unknown Font Type (C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\SNAP____.TTF) Error 1503: Unknown Font Type (C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\CAMBRIA.TTC) Both of which I simply removed manually (one of which was huge). http://i.cubeupload.com/nB4f4x.gif Running "Start Menu Cleaner FFrenzy" again, the log showed no font needed to be deleted. Going back to panopticlick.eff.org, I was still "unique" but that isn't what I concentrate on. What changed was that the "System Fonts" section was no longer the worst fingerprinting offender. Surprisingly, and ironically (considering the earlier discussion about the browser UA), the UA became the most revealing of my system characteristics! http://i.cubeupload.com/i20npm.gif I think it's humorous that the fingerprinting brought us back to the UA string, but that's so easy to spoof that I'm not in need of help I don't think (even though this is a new browser to me so I don't know how it does UA spoofing). The end result is that the FontFrenzy program is *easy* to use, and it seems to do *exactly* what you want, which is in one button press, it restores your fonts to the ones that Windows came with, and no others! Thanks Shadow for being a Windows expert! You saved all of us a *lot* of work because otherwise we'd have to become font experts ourselves - whereas I'd rather push the button! Thanks! |
#11
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
Jonas S Schneider wrote:
If there was a "font cleaner" like there is a "crap cleaner", that would be ideal as all I want to do is pare down my fonts to whatever fonts are most common on Windows XP systems today. You can delete the fonts yourself. However, to know which ones to keep that came included in Windows XP, find a list of them, like: http://www.styopkin.com/articles/fon...led_winxp.html However, since you installed software that also installed fonts, they may puke when you delete their font. For example, they may use a font in their toolbars or alongside icon and not having those fonts means the next best matching font gets used which could be too big to fit or too small it view easily. What you might want to try first is to hide all the non-standard fonts. Right-click on a font and select Hide. Then check if panopticlick can see those hidden fonts. http://www.styopkin.com/articles/uninstall_fonts.html Hiding is available in Windows 7 that I use. If hiding is not available in Windows XP, see if you can drag the font to a temp folder. Then zip up the folder and stow away the .zip file so you can recover a font that you find later is still needed. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1768888,00.asp |
#12
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
Jonas S Schneider wrote:
What happens is that panopticlick runs a Java (or Flash?) program which reveals to the web server *all* the fonts on your system. Javascript can be used but is clumsy. The script iterates through a long list of known fonts and tests to see if each one is available. Usually Flash scripting is used to get the list of fonts on the client end. At panopticlick, if you disable Javascript, you'll never get past the initial page of "Testing your browser". It can't proceed. Lots of users use NoScript or other Javascript blockers. Until they trust a site (or succumb to that site's requirement so the page is usable), they don't allow Javascript. Nowadays it's pretty hard to avoid Javascript. |
#13
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
Jonas,
I realize you were responding to someone else, but just to explain further, all I'm "trying" to do is attack the biggest fingerprint problem first. Thats a good idea ... It's a normal way to approach such things since you never know which fingerprinting technique sites will use. ... but when you do not know where that "biggest problem" resides that will be a bit hard. :-) If I knew that the UA string was the "most important", For this you have my apologies. I'm so accustomed to having scripting turned off, I often do not think about it until way to late (in a non-scripting environment th UA is pretty-much the only thing giving your secrets away - which you probably already know). To that end, this thread is really here to only ask the one question of whether anyone knows of an existing "font cleaner" which will identify all the non-standard fonts on any WinXP computer, and allow you to easily delete them. If that really is what you want to do than you could do that manually. Just go to the control panel, select fonts, and remove to your hearts desire. But please do realize that by going that way you will ultimatily be left with a machine which you can't do anything personalized with anymore, as you need to keep it level with the rest of the mowing field. :-| My suggestion would be to see if you can figure out which identifying methods are the most used, and try to curtail them*. Presuming that JS playes a big role in it, you could see if you could override certain commands to only return some predetermined values, which you can probably do with GreaseMonkey. *just now the "privacy mode" of FF comes to mind. Ofcourse, the first thing I would suggest is to see if you can simply refuse requests from (most always third-party) websites who think they should be fingerprinting in the first place. My plugin of choice for that is RequestPolicy, but NoScript would most likely also work. Regards, Rudy Wieser -- Origional message: Jonas S Schneider schreef in berichtnieuws ... On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 22:38:14 +0200, "R.Wieser" wrote: And by the way: What *I* ment to suggest is for him to look at his browsers UA, and remove the parts that make him stand out. Nothing more, nothing less. I realize you were responding to someone else, but just to explain further, all I'm "trying" to do is attack the biggest fingerprint problem first. It's a normal way to approach such things since you never know which fingerprinting technique sites will use. If I knew that the UA string was the "most important", I'd attack it (but it's so easy to spoof that I wouldn't bother with asking since there are extensions and methods abound to change the UA string). The problem on the fonts is that I am just looking for a program to make my life easier. Sure, I can manually do anything but then I have to learn more about fonts than I need to 'if' ... if a program already exists. It's like building my own "ccleaner" or "irfanview" or "vlc". Sure, I probably can become an expert in each, but the hope is that someone else already specialized in that. To that end, this thread is really here to only ask the one question of whether anyone knows of an existing "font cleaner" which will identify all the non-standard fonts on any WinXP computer, and allow you to easily delete them. |
#14
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
Jonas S Schneider wrote:
On Fri, 28 Apr 2017 18:56:13 +0200, "R.Wieser" wrote: You have not told us which browser you use, but a browser like FireFox allows you to change its "user-agent" string, even allowing you to disguise yourself as a fully different browser. Thanks. I see that Vanguard explained already that this is about the system and application fonts installed on the entire Windows PC. What happens is that panopticlick runs a Java (or Flash?) program which reveals to the web server *all* the fonts on your system. From that, they can "fingerprint" you (in addition to other things). It's hard to explain if you've never been to panopticlick, but if you go there once, you'll see that they list a dozen items which they use to fingerprint you, where your job is to look at the worst one and fix it. For me, the worst one is that the fonts scattered about on my WinXP system pretty much make me unique. So the question is merely whether there is an *easy* way to get back to whatever fonts that most systems have, where I surmise the easiest way to do that is to find a "font cleaner" (similar in operation to how ccleaner works for example). Does anyone know of such a font cleaner for WinXP? http://www.networkworld.com/article/...-to-erase.html "Circumventing the Fingerprint A better approach is to make your browser fingerprint as common and generic as possible. You can do that by running the browser inside a clean and un-customized virtual machine. It’s only in this kind of environment that it’s feasible to revert to the clean state at the end of every use, preventing the accumulation of identifying changes. This approach gives the browser a truly generic identifier, while eliminating all other kinds of tracking techniques." The idea is, you install the OS, install the browser, shut down the VM and make a backup copy. Now, unpack a fresh copy of the OS image, before using the browser in it. This prevents cookies from being collected (even in DOM). And by using an out-of-the-box setup with minimal customization, your panopticlick should be "better but not perfect". Paul |
#15
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Changed browser and noticed system fonts are making me unique
On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:34:18 +0000 (UTC), Jonas S Schneider
wrote: On Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:04:27 +0000 (UTC), Jonas S Schneider wrote: Font Frenzy allows you to strip away all your excess fonts and restores your system to only the fonts that are essential to Windows, giving you the maximum performance speed possible. Read more at: https://tr.im/1ZVw2 [/quote] More after I use it... The program installed quickly and went where I wanted it to go. c:\progs\cleaners\ffrenzy\ It didn't create a desktop shortcut for my custom start menu, so I just cut and paste from the "programs" menu the font frenzy shortcut into my own start menu (Start Menu Cleaners FFrenzy.lnk) It came up with a list of "Installed Fonts" and five buttons Defrenzy -- removes all fonts except those shipped with Windows XP! FrenzySnap -- font snapshots to use to restore original fonts Refrenzy -- reinstalling fonts after taking font snapshots FrenzyMan -- font management like delete, view, add, etc. FrenzyInfo -- it's the help menu I hit the "FrenzySnap" button to make a snapshot of existing fonts. Then I hit the "DeFrenzy" button to remove all but WindowsXP fonts. http://i.cubeupload.com/5ZS5GI.gif Surprisingly there were 357 fonts removed, with only two errors: Error 1503: Unknown Font Type (C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\SNAP____.TTF) Error 1503: Unknown Font Type (C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\CAMBRIA.TTC) Both of which I simply removed manually (one of which was huge). http://i.cubeupload.com/nB4f4x.gif Running "Start Menu Cleaner FFrenzy" again, the log showed no font needed to be deleted. Going back to panopticlick.eff.org, I was still "unique" but that isn't what I concentrate on. What changed was that the "System Fonts" section was no longer the worst fingerprinting offender. Surprisingly, and ironically (considering the earlier discussion about the browser UA), the UA became the most revealing of my system characteristics! http://i.cubeupload.com/i20npm.gif I think it's humorous that the fingerprinting brought us back to the UA string, but that's so easy to spoof that I'm not in need of help I don't think (even though this is a new browser to me so I don't know how it does UA spoofing). The end result is that the FontFrenzy program is *easy* to use, and it seems to do *exactly* what you want, which is in one button press, it restores your fonts to the ones that Windows came with, and no others! Thanks Shadow for being a Windows expert! You saved all of us a *lot* of work because otherwise we'd have to become font experts ourselves - whereas I'd rather push the button! Thanks! YW. The only problem is that some installed programs require special fonts. I have a Brazilian dictionary that needs it's own set of hand brewed fonts. So I went to font frenzy's backup folder, (FontFrenzy\Fonts) and copied the necessary fonts over to windows\fonts. I then defrenzied and gave the backup the name of the dictionary. So whenever I have to use the dictionary, I just restore that backup (over 20 fonts) with a click, use the dictionary, then "defrenzy" again. It's annoying, but works. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
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