Typetester – Compare fonts for the screen

I am totally going to use this to help pick the type face for my re-design. Recommendation: copy some real text from your blog into the sample text. There's a big difference between looking at text and reading text. Concern: being a 3-column fixed-width layout set at 1024 pixels wide the line length is shorter than that used in the majority of websites. Line length has an integral relationship with leading (line height) and font size. Being able to control only 2 out of 3 of these variables is rather limiting*. In fact, the more I think about it the more I'm not sure that this tool will be helpful since the words-per-line count only becomes reasonable at <=11px, which is just too small for a broad audience. Ohwell, I think it will still be useful for my new site layout, as it is 4 columns wide in places, so the short line length does apply.

*yes, it's true that if you're desiging a fluid width layout you will never have control over the line length (aside from setting min/max width), but what you can do is anticipate a likely range of widths at typical screen resolutions and typical window widths. And to those running full screen at 1600*1200+, fucking grow up! If you run full screen in applications other than design/dev environments then you don't deserve that big monitor. Go on to Craigslist right now and trade it with someone who can't afford a bigger monitor, but would use one appropriately if they had one.