After importing fonts (which you can do by dragging folders to the Library or via a menu command), you can rate, tag and organize your fonts into smart folders or collections. You can also add notes to a specific font. The program elegantly shows you what the font looks like, using a character view, the traditional waterfall and a "body text" view that shows what the font looks like in blocks of arranged text. Activating a font is as simple as either right-clicking and selecting Activate/Deactivate or clicking on the check button that appears at the top of the program.

Although I had no problem imorting my system font folders, when I tried to import a large font folder, the Fontcase beta did choke. I have no doubt that this will be improved before the final version is released, but it is worth pointing out.

Although most font management applications for OS X are aimed at the professional design community or users with lots and lots of fonts, Fontcase really seems best for regular users or users with moderate sized collections. I say this because Fontcase doesn't handle activating or deactivating of system fonts, nor will it autoactivate fonts (as far as I could tell) in other applications. Instead, it is a superior front-end to the built-in Font Book, with the added advantage of making organzing, tagging and sharing fonts much, much easier.

For the last several weeks, I've been using Insider Software's FontAgent Pro 4, and I have to say, it has become my favorite font management utility. Of course, that utility comes at a price ($99 for a single license), but if you have an extremely large font collection, as I do, it becomes necessary.

If your font collection isn't in the 10,000+ range (I'm at 14,007, myself) -- Fontcase is a great Font Book alternative.

If you haven't subscribed to the Fontcase newsletter, you can still do so at the Fontcase website and receive a link to the beta download.