ResumeRoast 2.2: You Asked for Hex Codes and Custom Fonts

Eight colors is enough to build a readable document. Until you need to match a specific branding guide. Then it gets claustrophobic. A reader sent in an email asking for a way out of that box.

I also have a few feature suggestions that I think could add a lot of value:

1. Ability to use HEX values for full color customization, rather than being limited to preset options.

2. The option to upload custom fonts or choose from a wider selection would also be a significant improvement.

Both landed in version 2.2 of ResumeRoast, though the second one arrived by a different route than the one asked for.

Twenty-three swatches and a hex field

Before the update, you had eight preset accent colors, and no way to type a hex. The new palette offers 23 colors. Eight deep, eight bright, five vivid, and two neutrals.

You'll see the same 23 colors, in the exact same order, across all three pickers. The accent picker lives above the document preview. The text-color and highlight pickers sit inside the rich text toolbar. A color sits in the same cell wherever it is offered.

Every one of those pickers also takes a hex. The accent picker gets it through a field and the system color wheel. The two in the rich text toolbar take it through a field placed directly inside the panel.

Highlight uses the same palette mixed 75% into white. A saturated background eats the words sitting on top of it, and a resume is printed as often as it is read on screen.

Reading the local font list

ResumeRoast does not upload custom fonts. If you want a new font, you install it the normal way on your machine, and the app offers it. It just reads what is already there.

The original three built-in stacks, Sans, Serif, and Mono, are still sitting at the top under a BUILT-IN header. Every font family installed on the machine is listed below them.

The list is read natively rather than through the web platform. The browser API for it, queryLocalFonts, is Chromium-only, and neither webview has it. macOS reads it through CoreText. Windows pulls it through GDI's EnumFontFamiliesExW.

Because the two systems report their fonts differently, the panel adjusts to match. On macOS, the panel splits the list in two. A family whose files live inside /System is one macOS ships and protects. Anything else was installed afterwards, which means a font manager can switch it off. The panel leads with the second group, because that is the one you chose to add. On Windows, the system hands over face names and no file paths, so there it is one list.

The list is re-read every time the panel opens rather than cached for the session. That is deliberate. You can leave the app, install a font, and come back to find it waiting in the list.

Beside the font search box there is a strip for FontShiphon. It is another app on the menu that previews every installed font and switches families on or off.

Keeping the selection lit

Version 2.2.1 followed with a small fix. Opening a color picker in the rich text toolbar used to move focus out of the editor, and the selection highlight went with it. The text you were about to color stopped looking selected.

The color applied correctly the whole time. Only the visual feedback was missing, which read as "my selection disappeared".

The toolbar now cancels its own mousedown so focus never leaves the editor and the selection stays lit. The hex field is the one exception, because it has to take focus to be typed into. There, the selection is painted back without touching the document.

I read the feature requests that get sent in. You can find ResumeRoast in the Mocha category, or test out the update on the free trial.