I got this idea for the Dafont website fontbrowser.

You can set up your own text to search for the right font (text preview). That's very handy.

I would like to suggest another idea to this. I call it Paragraph View.

This could be very helpful to find fonts needed for huge walls of text for in books or magazines. Just to show the font in a basic paragraph, a block of text, containing all characters and special characters. Or you could use a Lorem Ipsum paragraph. I think the best location on the site would be on the font-page itself (when you click on a font to view it). There can be a button to toggle this view.

What do you think?

Got the paragraph thing, but i don't understand what you're talking about here.

I was meaning that text preview thingy.

oh ok.
i thought it was your first request, then your second request was the paragraph thing.

I was talking about that text preview thing, because that system/technique is usable for this idea as well.

Are you talking about somehow integrating your idea within dafont, essentially expanding upon the current preview option? If so, I think it would be great. There's a neat tool at www.impallari.com/testing, which I use to test out my own fonts in development. I can see how something like this would be very useful for dafont users who were trying to select the best font for a given project.

Yes, i do.
I hope the DaFont webmaster found this useful and will consider to develop it into the Dafont website.

Or, since all of the fonts are free to download, you could just download and install them, and do that in a text document yourself. Type the text, name and save it, then change the font and point size. Le voila.

Et voilà
What you're telling him to do is not really handy, wastes a lot of time, a lot of bandwidth,...

Also showing the fonts online as suggested is using bandwidth ...

Yes, it would save a lot of time searching for the right font for textwalls. Download each font to check it out is too much time consuming.

Oh, and with the internet of nowadays bandwidth shouldn't be a problem in most countries. But that's a total different discussion.

My post #8 wasted less bandwidth than your post #9, or were the downloaded fonts considered to be the wasted bandwidth?

I just can't see this 'custom paragraph of text display' happening, because it doesn't impact the Font Identification forum. To me, this inquiry is like 'The free grapes are delicious, but it would be a great idea if someone peeled them for me'.

Custom paragraph text display makes a lot of sense, if the object is to sell a font by way of download. DaFont showcases 'second and third tier' typography that's free to download. The top tier is going to be the 'Professional' designers and foundries, with the 1,000 glyph character maps, and no kerning or metrics errors. The fourth tier is the fonts that are submitted here, but rejected, or the ones that show up on DeviantArt or the ones that are only on Fontspace because it has no evaluation process, (which is both a good, and a bad thing, like 'open mike night' at a comedy club).

It's not really the point of DaFont to chose fonts for the downloader, so he avoids using bandwidth for the ones he doesn't want to use, and saves time by not opening the .zip files in which their fonts were contained. If a guy wants custom text display of his installed fonts at various sizes. without leaving a browser window, he should just use this tool:

http://www.stcassociates.com/lab/fontbrowser.html

But custom paragraph text display does not benefit DaFont, nor the authors showcased here; it only benefits a user, who wants us to invest resources to save him time. I can't see that happening.

Yeah, that's called a service.

Rodolphe could just have given the ftp credentials to browse fonts on the server.
He didn't do that, he created a website around the truetype files to make users life easier.

Reading the replies, I have the sense we might have different interpretations of what is being suggested here.

My understanding is this:

Click the dafont banner, then filter by sans serif fonts - you'll end up here - http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501. The default setting for the 'Preview' mode is blank, but visitors can customise this single-line field in order to compare how all the listed fonts display their preferred text sample. I thought the OP was essentially suggesting this single line 'Preview' mode be expanded to allow users to paste passages of text, enabling them to visualise and compare both horizontal and vertical spacing in listed font, which would help chose the most appropriate font for a given project.

If this is what the OP has in mind, I can't see a downside.

This field is limited to 80 characters and spaces. That's why.
In the "More options" field, we could have a ticked option that would show, let's say, about 650 characaters of Lorem Ipsum text written in 12px? hich would give a good idea of the rendering of different fonts in 12px.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi lacus metus, pulvinar nec vehicula ac, sagittis eget dui. Pellentesque tincidunt blandit odio, vitae semper lacus euismod quis. Maecenas sit amet quam ut metus interdum pellentesque. Mauris id lacus quam. Integer nibh sem, tempor quis dignissim nec, eleifend eu nisi. Morbi at portit est enim. Morbi sit amet metus eget nisl convallis luctus. Nulla venenatis sodales nulla vel porttitor. Curabitur eget dictum nisl. Etiam semper hendrerit dignissim. Donec ut massa quis libero congue fermentum nec at neque. Pellentesque quam sem, malesuada faucibus porta vitae, mollis ac metus alminus

Is that an idea?

I've always wondered what anagrams might be made from the Lorem ipsum text, and whether they could be arranged to form sentences that follow at least the rudimentary rules of grammar.

On another board, one of the members uses the nickname Tish, and lamented that the anagram of their nickname was "Shit". I pointed out that there are also two other anagrams, "hits" and h'sti!, a diminutive of la hostie, the host, or Eucharist at a Catholic Mass, in the French-Canadian joual dialect. Spoken as an exclamation, it means "Shit!.

This one only works with installed fonts so that is not really a solution in this context. The impallari.com/testing page explogos suggested does the job perfectly well also for fonts that are not installed. Yes, indeed, Zeror, you will have to download potential candidates and unzip them and that, alas, takes time.

Niet voor alles is er een paplepel, soms moet er gekauwd worden

try http://en.anagramme-expert.com

That's exactly what i had in mind. But it doesn't have to be necessarily on the font list of a category (that link you posted). It could be on the selected font page instead or on both the list or individual font page.