Trying out Fontburner

I ran across this really cool service today called Fontburner.

What they do---and I have absolutely no idea how they do this---is to force the browser to display your site in any font that they have in their library. This is a significantly larger number than the 6 or 7 fonts that you can normally count on everyone having (which is why web design is usually so typographically limited).

So what you are seeing now (I hope) is everything my headlines displayed in Calibri, a sans-serif font that I like.

I think it’s loading noticeably slower, and so far I’ve only got the one font installed. But if the load times can be improved, and you can get a good mix of fonts going, this type of tech could open a lot of doors for web design that will, I think, vastly improve the way the web looks.

Update: Looks like the technology is called SIFr, and I could improve load times by serving it myself (means getting my hands dirty). Kind of a pain for an individual blogger, but a news organization should have no trouble with it…