And yes, mariah, those less plagued than I by the threat of software obsolescence need not worry about these things for the moment. 

Oh, and P.S.—invite me to your next cocktail party, and we’ll talk typefaces to your heart’s content.

I am approaching onscreen letter-quality type warily. Some typefaces that were designed with inkspread in mind–the softening and thickening of edges and serifs when the ink is put on paper–don’t translate well to the screen. Reading them makes me feel like I’m shaking hands with a pod person–there’s something not quite right about him. Something akin to your cartoon universe, perhaps?

Then again, reading a well-done typeface onscreen can startle me–make me feel like the person on the other end of the phone line just appeared behind my shoulder in my living room. Disorienting, but I’ll get used to it eventually. Is it wrong to be fond of the pixilated font’s overt, visual representation of mediation?

Thanks for providing a forum for me to hold forth on typefaces. For some strange reason, nobody at cocktail parties seems to want to hear me talk about it at length.

In terms of online legibility of big chunks of text, I like to use this short-hand rule for gross design - san serif works well on emitted light (as in for a monitor) and serifs look okay printed.  Why does this work? Well, because if you’re working with inks with physical properties, you tend to lose the “ends” of the letters - a little serif is great at delineating the shape of the letter via enhanced contrast.  When the monitor is simply beaming light at your eye, you don’t have “ink loss” - ie. the contrast of the font is inherent. 

I’m rambling b/c it’s about 4 million degrees here, but whatever you decide on, try adding a little vertical height to your base text - if you’re using a 12 px font, try it w/ a 16 px line height. 

You might also want to experiment w/ other carbonized browsers - I like OmniWeb just fine.  But I prefer my text plain.

And PS - you’re so right in regards to cheap sushi!

I suppose I’m just so used to seeing pixilated screen fonts that this smoothed-out stuff eerily reduces the mediation I’m used to the machine providing.  Pixilated Arial, or Verdana, or Times-Roman was a sign that I was working on a machine, a powerful electronic machine, which was always reminding me that what I saw on the screen was an imaginary representation of the document that the computer could, through its interaction with my printer, produce.  Now, with this (imperfect, but closer to) letter-quality stuff onscreen, not to mention the strange flatness of OS X’s white screens—well, it’s like WYSIWYG-squared, like the imaginary aspect of the document on-screen is gone, like I’m working right on paper.

Either that, or the mediation is so heightened until it’s a little like working in a cartoon universe.

I dunno.

By way of explanation, an analogy: direct-mail companies have learned that, for unknown reasons, their junk mail gets more responses if they use low-tech-looking Courier, rather than the professional, typset look of New Century Schoolbook or Times Roman. Why? Unclear–but there seems to be something more personal and inviting about the less-polished typeface. In short, I find your current look more readable and inviting. But if forced to adjust, I will.