Type Tester

Testing screen fonts across various browsers and platforms can be a headache. What headline goes with the text, how small can you make the legal copy … you know the drill. Typetester presents you three columns in which you can pick fonts off of a menu, the adjust size and leading, text and background colors, word spacing and tracking. As you change settings with the various pulldown menus, the sample slugs underneath change to reflect them.

It also very helpfully supplies three sets of built-in fonts, the “safe” set — those installed on Mac OS X and Win XP — and built-in sets for Windows and Mac. If you want to live dangerously, it also lets you specify any other font you may have installed.

By working on two computers and several browsers simultaneously, it let me nail down three very specific styles in about half an hour. The trial-and-error I went though would have taken several times that long by modifying the style sheet. Then after I was finished I was able to lay them out side-by-side to see how they worked together. You can also lay out three different header levels next to each other. Once you’re done, it will generate a css block for you.

One problem (or depending on your point of view, a solution) was that it won’t work on IE/Mac.