Icons – Google Fonts • Hacker News Board

The provided usage example is bad for accessibility: the name of the icon, e.g. ”check_circle”, will be announced by screen readers. If there is other contextual information that explains the icon, the icon can be hidden from screen readers using aria-hidden=”true”. However, in cases where the icon appears stand-alone, it needs to contain a human-understandable text that explains its meaning.

Also, never use Google’s CDN for loading fonts or icons — always self-host them. The CDNs are used to track your users.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#5

Post by wodenokoto » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 11:08 AM UTC

So now users need to download several megabytes of font to display check marks and search icons or is there something I’m misunderstanding?

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#6

Post by paul_f » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 11:11 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #5

So now users need to download several megabytes of font to display check marks and search icons or is there something I’m misunderstanding?

It is a 42KB file for 600 icons.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#7

Post by x3c » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 11:12 AM UTC

Great to see Social distancing related icons in the list.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#8

Post by corty » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 11:13 AM UTC

eurasiantiger wrote: post #4

The provided usage example is bad for accessibility: the name of the icon, e.g. ”check_circle”, will be announced by screen readers. If there is other contextual information that explains the icon, the icon can be hidden from screen readers using aria-hidden=”true”. However, in cases where the icon appears stand-alone, it needs to contain a human-understandable text that explains its meaning. Also, never use Google’s…

And special-purpose-font/script CDNs don't improve load times any more because browser caches are partitioned by domain nowadays. So using a CDN for fonts or scripts just increases your downtime probability and your GDPR headaches.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#9

Post by Hasnep » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 11:14 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #5

So now users need to download several megabytes of font to display check marks and search icons or is there something I’m misunderstanding?

From the developer guide:

> The icon font weighs in at only 42KB in its smallest woff2 format and 56KB in standard woff format. By comparison, the SVG files compressed with gzip will generally be around 62KB in size, but this can be reduced considerably by compiling only the icons you need into a single SVG file with symbol sprites.

So not that large, but I still prefer SVG icons.

Re: Icons – Google Fonts

#10

Post by jfoster » Wed, Mar 03, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

Are Google serious? Simultaneously pushing websites to be highly efficient (Core Web Vitals), at the same time as introducing the methods that can make them less efficient.

Also, about these icons, they mention "please don’t try to sell them", immediately followed by "Apache license 2.0". Well, Google, which is it? Do they actually mean to say "you have permission to sell them, but please don't?"