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Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

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Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#51

Post by morpher »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #47
MartinCron wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also an ugly hack to get around the fact that making production graphics for every single icon in every single size/color you may need introduces some serious friction to the development process.

That's only a problem if you lack the proper workflow. If you design your icons in Illustrator using the pixel grid, you can export at any size while remaining pixel-perfect.

This is also true with Inkscape for those with open-source workflows. Also, since svg is a text format, it is simple to batch replace colors in a set of svg files.

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#52

Post by rubergly »

fourspace wrote: post #21
Leynos wrote: post #13

They missed one obvious disadvantage - it doesn't work where users force their browser to use a specific font. All I see are letters instead of icons. That said, would it not also make more sense to use codepoints within the "Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs" range where possible ( http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf ), where you'll find things like volume icons, padlocks, pins, etc. These are missing from…

Trying to introduce a design compatible with a user that specifically overrides your design seems like a losing battle, not one that should even be waged.

I think the point is that a user wouldn't know they're overriding the design. When a user sets a uniform font, they're opting to not see whatever font the site was designed for, but it's not at all obvious to them that they'd be messing with icons.

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#54

Post by adnam »

fourspace wrote: post #21
Leynos wrote: post #13

They missed one obvious disadvantage - it doesn't work where users force their browser to use a specific font. All I see are letters instead of icons. That said, would it not also make more sense to use codepoints within the "Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs" range where possible ( http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf ), where you'll find things like volume icons, padlocks, pins, etc. These are missing from…

Trying to introduce a design compatible with a user that specifically overrides your design seems like a losing battle, not one that should even be waged.

That's not the point, I think. If the article proposed we all switched to using wingdings, it would get the derision it deserved.

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#55

Post by Someone »

Leynos wrote: post #13

They missed one obvious disadvantage - it doesn't work where users force their browser to use a specific font. All I see are letters instead of icons. That said, would it not also make more sense to use codepoints within the "Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs" range where possible ( http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F300.pdf ), where you'll find things like volume icons, padlocks, pins, etc. These are missing from…

Wouldn't it make more sense to use a private use area?

That would still have the risk of collisions when others use the area for a different character, but at least, the rendering library will have a reason to suspect that may be the case.

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#57

Post by Someone »

obeattie wrote: post #15

I really don't see that this is a good idea. Icons are by definition graphical, they aren't textual. I can see the draw of having vector icons; but we have other technologies for that. I know people are probably going to tell me an "SVG sprite" isn't possible, but I still maintain that abusing fonts and text like this is a bad idea, even if it does bag you cool CSS3 animations.

I do agree with you, but have you checked the Unicode tables recently? We already had "black queen" and "snowman", but Unicode 6.0 brought us, among others, "Smiling face with horns", "Cat face with tears of joy", and "Hear-no-evil monkey".

Apparently, the world thinks the distinction between text and icon is not that large. Yes, that is mostly for pragmatic reasons, as SMS only does text, and people want to send this stuff using SMS, but it is there, and we cannot deny that.

Given that, I do not think we cannot object loudly against the use of application-specific iconic characters.

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#58

Post by pepeto »

Not switching that fast. The few advantages are size/load time as well as switching effortlessly color. But at the price of ... compatibility, accessibility, rendering (white on black background issue with fonts), single color icons, delayed loading(sometimes fonts load after the page)?

If you want fast loading use css+single image robust method as in: http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo86.png and http://images.apple.com/global/nav/images/globalnav.png

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#59

Post by lparry »

mrb wrote: post #49

I like this idea, for simple icons. Standard Unicode code points for symbols could be used to even allow screen readers to read them! Another alternative for pages with simple icons is to use the Data URI scheme: This compresses very well with HTTP content encoding when the same icon is repeated in multiple places in the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme

And if your user visits more than one page on your site, you've successfully killed asset caching. More data for your server to send _and_ a slower experience for the user, losses all round

Re: Web Designers should all be using this idea by now: Font Icons.

#60

Post by alanh »

The post acts as if the idea is really new (some article is said to have introduced the idea "one week ago") but I have seen this in practice at least months ago. It’s not a new idea. But there are reasons it hasn’t taken off like crazy.

There are still serious disadvantages to (ad least the obvious implementations of) the technique, as powerful as it is when it works right. Others on this page mention drawbacks. Not the least of which: It’s not super easy to make a font with just-right glyphs; you cannot guarantee that no users don’t see or hear letters instead of images or alt-text (ooh! anybody remember our blind/accessible users?).

So until I see a post that examines and solves all the potential issues with icon fonts, I have to stay away.

As pointed out below, this blog post is over a year old. Oops.

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