font-picker

Font Picker

A simple, customizable font selector allowing users to preview, choose, and use Google Fonts on your website.

• automatic font download and generation of the required CSS styles
• efficient font previews (previews in the list are loaded dynamically; the full font is only downloaded on selection)
• no dependencies

→ Demo

If you use React, see Font Picker for React.

Getting started

Setup

• Using script tags: Download the latest release and include the lib/index.js file in your HTML:

<script type="text/javascript" src="./path/to/dist/index.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    const fontPicker = new FontPicker(
        'YOUR_API_KEY', // Google API key
        'Open Sans', // default font
        { limit: 50 } // additional options
    );
    fontPicker.init();
</script>

• Using NPM: Install the font-picker package from NPM and require it in a JavaScript file:

npm install font-picker

const FontPicker = require('font-picker');

const fontPicker = new FontPicker(
    'YOUR_API_KEY', // Google API key
    'Open Sans', // default font
    { limit: 50 } // additional options
);
fontPicker.init();

Displaying the font picker

Create an empty <div> with the ID "font-picker" in your HTML file. This is where the font picker will be generated.

<div id="font-picker"></div>

Applying the selected font

Add the class "apply-font" to all HTML elements you want to apply the selected font to.

When the user selects a font using the font picker, it will automatically be downloaded (added as a <link> to the document's head) and applied to all HTML elements of the "apply-font" class.

See demo/index.html for an example.

Customization

Parameters

The following parameters can be passed to the constructor of the FontPicker class:

• apiKey (required): Google API key (can be generated here)
• defaultFont: Font that is selected on initialization (default: 'Open Sans')
• options: Object with additional (optional) parameters:
  • name: If you have multiple font pickers on your site, you need to give them unique names (which may only consist of letters and digits). These names must also be appended to the font picker's ID and the .apply-font class name; e.g. if { name: 'main' }, then use #font-picker-main and .apply-font-main
  • families: If only specific fonts shall appear in the list, specify their names in an array (default: all font families)
  • categories: Array of font categories – possible values: 'sans-serif', 'serif', 'display', handwriting', 'monospace' (default: all categories)
  • variants: Array of variants which the fonts must include and which will be downloaded; the first variant in the array will become the default variant (and will be used in the font picker and the .apply-font class); e.g. ['regular', 'italic', '700', '700italic'] (default: ['regular'])
  • limit: Maximum number of fonts to be displayed in the list (the least popular fonts will be omitted; default: 100)
  • sort: Sorting attribute for the font list – possible values: 'alphabetical' (default), 'popularity'
• onChange: Function which is executed whenever the user changes the active font and its stylesheet finishes downloading

Functions

The FontPicker class has the following functions:

• init(): Generates and displays the font picker inside the div with id="font-picker"
• getActiveFont(): Returns an object with information about the currently selected font

Build Process

• git clone
• npm install
• npm start to generate the library bundle using Rollup (in the lib directory)
• See the font picker in action by opening the demo/index.html file