Can the font list open as a floating panel?

[StarAG​]

Is it possible for fonts to display the list as a floating panel.

And can we have

1- Ability to select text in the artboard while the "Font Selector" panel is open.

2- Show the preview of the fonts on the right side inside "Font Selector" panel.

3- Ability to write the text inside "Font Selector" panel and display that text as a preview.

4- Following #3, Ability to drag the desired font text from "Font Selector" panel to the Illustrator artboard

[Ton Frederiks]

The best place for feature requests is UserVoice:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

[Bobby Henderson]

The Character panel already sort of displays the fonts list in a floating manner. The Contextual Task Bar also does this. If you have a text object selected the floating bar will display a fonts drop-down menu and some other basic options. Usually the Contextual Task Bar is turned on by default in new versions of Illustrator. If it isn't visible go to the Window menu to click it to enable it.

[StarAG​]

Currently its a dropdown which vanishes after any font is selected. I am looking something which stays to make the selection process easy.

[Bobby Henderson]

It is standard behavior in most applications for a drop-down font menu to disappear once a specific typeface style is clicked/selected. I would not want a font menu stuck in view after I selected a certain type style; the menu would be hiding a substantial amount of the work space.

If you are trying to browse how certain typefaces look when styled to a piece of text on the art board you can select the piece of text and merely hover over fonts in the drop-down font menu. The fonts will preview on the selected piece of text without having to click on the font names.

[Conrad_C]

Aside from the list not saying open, you already get a lot of that in the current font list. And it uses fewer steps, because there is no need to move text to the panel and back out to the artboard, just select it on the artboard. When you select the text on the layout, you get to preview the text in real time exactly as it will be used in the design…precise feedback, no guessing. 

Although the list won’t stay open, notice that you can preview different fonts without closing the list. So you can at least leave the list open while trying out different fonts. The important thing to remember here is to simply hover over the font names, don’t click to select one yet. Only click when you like the font that the hover-preview is temporarily showing on the layout, and want to apply it.

It’s kind of the best of both worlds: You get to keep the font list open as long as you’re not sure and trying out fonts, and it closes after you apply the font and need to free up the screen space so that you can see what you’re designing. 

Also notice that I often type into the font field when I want to narrow things down a bit. At one point in the demo I enter “black” into the font field because I want it to show only fonts with “black” in the name, because I want a thick headline/display font. 

And finally, you can do this in the Contextual Task Bar or the Properties panel, so if one is closed you can still do it. It's really quite flexible.