A new Wakamai Fondue

Roel Nieskens

Hi everybody, a new version of Wakamai Fondue was just released at the Fontstand conference in Berlin:

https://wakamaifondue.com

It's now using LibFont instead of Fontkit which allows me to dig a little bit deeper into the lookups and other font tech. There are a few more interfaces to test your font, with one generic word processor-style tester and a few dedicated to specific font tech. Some UI updates should also make it more convenient to test your font in the browser.

A bit more background info can be found in https://pixelambacht.nl/2026/a-new-wakamai-fondue/ and a more detail guide will follow soon.

Wakamai Fondue also features a test font (a role played by DJR's Gimlet while this version was in beta), namely Polymode Sans by XYZ Type Foundry. This way you can take Wakamai Fondue for a spin by just clicking a button.

You can also run it locally by grabbing the code from https://github.com/Wakamai-Fondue/wakamai-fondue-site/ which can be useful if you want to tweak the UI or the underlying engine to your liking. As before, there are no cookies or tracking and "uploaded" fonts never leave your computer.

The site doesn't yet work on mobile, and there's going to be a few rough edges, but I hope it'll be useful when testing your fonts.

Thanks to @Dave Crossland for funding the initiative to develop the new version!

There are a few other neat features in the making which'll hopefully put even more "ooh!" in the fondue. I'm currently working as independent freelance for all things fonts-and-frontend, so you can always commission me to add features or help you set up a local copy or workflow.

Happy fonduing! 🫕